Biological methanation of syngas from gasification and pyrolysis - promising concept for commercialization

The project is about bringing methane production through biological methanation of syngas closer to commercial use and thus contributing to the Swedish biofuel production in 2030.

In an ongoing project, RISE has run a so-called trickle bed reactor (TBR) for converting syngas by a biological process to methane and carbon dioxide. The results are promising and the process has shown stable operation with good efficiency.

A major advantage of biological methanation is that the reactor design can be made simple, which gives good scalability and low costs even for plants down to 6 MW or less.

With this project we want to explore what possible production techniques are available for syngas in the 6-30 MW scale and how they can be integrated effectively with biological methanation. The most promising concepts will be evaluated in more detail through techno-economic assessment. After completion of the project, the ambition is to build a pilot plant to demonstrate the concept.