Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

High Value Gas From Waste and Emissions

Advanced Renewable

Tue , 23 Apr 2024 23:47 WIB

There are many ways to convert waste and emissions into clean energy that is sustainable and low cost. If the waste is liquid or contains high water content, people have been converting it into biogas via a bio-digester for a long time. From solid and dry waste through gasification to syngas, the technology has also matured since the last century.

What is relatively new, even though the theory is two centuries old, is converting CO2 emissions into CO gas, which is the main element of syngas besides H2. However, CO gas also has weaknesses that are similar to syngas in general and also biogas, namely that it is relatively low in calories. Overall, the 3 types of gas have an average calorie content below 20 MJ/kg or less than half the calories found in oil (45 MJ/kg), let alone LPG which is around 49 MJ/kg.

The good news is that all the weaknesses in biogas, syngas in general and CO gas are now can be overcome. Apart from all of these being able to be used as raw materials for complex energy such as petrol, diesel, LPG, ethanol etc., in the form of syngas it can also be produced with very high calories using just one reactor which we call the Regenerative Energy (RE) Reactor.

So what are the advantages of converting low calorie gases into high calorie syngas? Apart from not having to bother making it into complex energy, this high calorie syngas can be an effective fuel for various types of gas engines and boilers without having to sacrifice its performance.

How high can the calories in these gases be increased? Simply put like this, if we react all the CO in this reactor to become H2, then all the syngas becomes H2 with calories of 120 MJ/kg or almost 3 times the calories in fuel in general.

But it doesn't need to be completely H2, if only 90% of the syngas is converted into H2 and 10% is still in the form of CO, the combination of the two becomes syngas with calories of 53 MJ/kg or above LPG. So high quality gas can be obtained from rubbish, waste and CO2 emissions by only involving one or two reactors.