In Denmark, the first biomethane aka renewable natural gas (RNG) from Nature Energy's Kværs biogas plant has just been produced. Once fully operational, the plant will be produce over 20 million Nm3 biomethane annually, displacing the corresponding amount of natural gas from the Danish energy system.
Please reload the page
Do you want to read the whole article?
- Six editions per year
- Full access to all digital content
- The E-magazine Bioenergy international
- And more ...
With the commissioning of the Nature Energy Kværs biogas plant, Nature Energy has now 13 operational plants in Denmark.
It is also currently building new plants in the United States, Canada, and several locations in Europe making it one of the world’s largest RNG producers.
This is a milestone for us. But being able to displace the fossil fuel energy sources and replace them with green, Danish-produced biogas is also primarily a major advance for the green transition, said Gudmund Vejbæk Jepsen, Plant Manager, Nature Energy Kværs.
Over the next few months, all the tanks at the plant will be filled with organic waste, and full production is expected to be reached by late January 2023.
Greening the Danish gas grid
Biomethane is expected to account for 40 percent of gas flowing through the gas grid in Denmark this year and the political ambition is to reach 100 percent by 2030.
Biogas is produced from substances such as slurry, deep litter, food waste from domestic kitchens, and other organic waste products.
In simple terms, a biogas plant is a gigantic hermetically-sealed compost tank that creates a sump, with an extractor at the top to suck out methane and other gases naturally produced when waste decomposes. It’s exactly the same process that occurs over millions of years to produce the natural gas we find underground, except that we are able to produce biogas here and now on the surface, using waste products to hand, explained Gudmund Jepsen Vejbæk.
When methane has been extracted from the waste and upgraded to grid gas quality, the remaining by-product (digestate) is returned to farmers where it’s used as a biofertiliser.
That makes biogas a sustainable resource as natural and sustainable as sun and wind, ended Gudmund Vejbæk Jepsen.