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Academic Freedom Renewable Gas

Renewable Gas 20120913

Things I’m learning today about Renewable Gas and Gas-to-Liquids include Renewable Methanol, Renewable Gasoline and Renewable DME. Many green fuel research and engineering projects have the aim of using hydrogen to power vehicles. Whilst I think that there will be some uses for hydrogen locomotion, such as for large vehicles in urban areas where airborne particulates must be reduced, the big win with hydrogen will come from its use in power generation – in combination with other gases.
Gas and liquid fuels with different chemistry burn in different ways, so it’s important that new power plants have flexible combustion systems, such as flexible gas turbines :-

It is useful to use “filler” – gases that are less energy dense or more unreactive to balance out the combustion profile of the stronger components :-

The real revolution in the production volumes of Renewable Gas is going to come with vastly increased supplies of Renewable Hydrogen, as, when mixed with other gases, or reacted with other gases, the end-product can burn more strongly :-

https://www.edenenergy.com.au/pdfs/20061101%20Hythane%20presentation.pdf

“Crossing The Chasm With BioHythane” : Embarrassing spelling, but really good ideas, here, including the slide “Gasification… : Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility”, and “BioHythane : a “real” bridging technology” :-

https://dawn.com/2012/06/30/making-use-of-hythane/

“Innovative process for the methanation of hydrogen : Microorganisms generate synthetic natural gas :
…The first step is to convert the excess power into hydrogen by means of electrolysis. This is followed by what is known as the methanation stage, in which synthetic methane is obtained from hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2). The required CO2 can be sourced from industrial processes, the surrounding air or biogas plants. MicrobEnergy uses highly specialised microorganisms, which directly convert hydrogen and carbon into pure methane. The microorganisms function at ambient pressure and temperature, and there are no special requirements regarding the purity of the source gases. The synthetic methane obtained in this way can either be held in a buffer store and converted into electricity with a CHP module as required, or can be injected directly into the natural gas grid…”

“Power to gas (P2G) : seen as a smart integration of existing technologies, which can provide flexibility to the electricity sector. The conversion of electricity into gaseous energy carriers—i.e. hydrogen and/or methane—can be stored in the gas grid infrastructure. Electricity should be accommodated as such whenever possible. If power congestion occurs or if power transmission capacity is fully utilized, power can be converted into hydrogen and added to the gas infrastructure. Whenever the addition of hydrogen is being limited—e.g., the influence of higher concentrations of hydrogen on the combustion behavior of the gas mixture at the end user—hydrogen can be converted into methane… Besides the role of methanation in accommodating large amounts of hydrogen into our current gas infrastructure and storing renewable energy, this process enables the recycling of CO2. The production of substitute natural gas from methanation of renewable hydrogen and CO2 contributes to the replacement of fossil natural gas. Although it is not a viable measure for decarbonizing our entire energy system or storing CO2, it can contribute to a reduction of fossil gas use.”

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