b:UP Technology

24 November 2014

Biomethane with Austep: from theory to practice.

The Legislative Decree dated 5 December 2013 allowed to input the gas in the gas-network or to use as traction fuel, the methane obtained by the upgrading of the biogas produced by anaerobic digestion of agricultural byproducts, slaughterhouses, organics, called therefore bio-methane

What is it about?
Bio-methane is equal to the methane we usually use in our everyday life but, while the methane is a fossil fuel, the bio-methane is a sustainable energetic source obtained through a biological process. The process to obtain bio-methane is called “upgrading”. The fuel obtained has the same characteristics allowing it to be used both for traction and to feed the gas network.

Bio-methane represents an opportunity to all those companies which produce biogas already and for those which get close the sustainable energies and bio-fuels productions for the first times. Basically the bio-methane is a bio-fuel produced by biogas cleaned by the CO2 allowing a calorific power increase.

AUSTEP is an EPC contractor which designs and builds anaerobic treatment plants for agricultural, zoo-technical and industrial fields to produce energy from sustainable sources under FER rules from 1995.

Technologies and upgrading process
The removal of CO2, the cleaning from impurities as H2S, humidity and so on allow the upgrading from biogas to bio-methane.

Austep b:UP technology is based on membrane filtering of biogas by using a PLC and an analyzer which verify the characteristics of bio-methane produced.

b:UP technology, developed by Austep, is easy to maintain, cheap and highly performing relevant to duration and bio-methane quality.

The upgrading plant is fed with the biogas coming from anaerobic digestion of agricultural byproducts, manures, organics from MSW and slaughterhouses waste. According to the characteristics of the biogas produced, a specific pre-treatment unit is expected.
b:UP is realized near to the biogas plant in containerized solution and could be of different sizes with different productive capacity.

“Austep is always engaged in developing new technologies to answer in the best possible way the market and environmental demands” – Eng. Giulio Becatti, Austep CTO comments – “and b:UP technology is the perfect example: the replacement of a part of fossil fuels with biofuels allows to reduce the gas emissions responsible for greenhouse effect. Basically the bio-methane helps the environmental protection.”

Austep is the first Italian company able to develop the b:UP technology concretely applied to Biogas plants for Bio-methane upgrading.