The project NEOSUCCESS will scale-up a process to simultaneously upgrade biogas and produce succinic acid


Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

The project NEOSUCCESS has obtained funding from the EU Fast Track Innovation (FTI) program, starting in June 2020. It is aimed at making commercially available an efficient technology for simultaneously upgrading biogas and producing biobased succinic acid (bio-SA) through a unique complementary process.

Figure 1. Scheme of the biogas upgrading reactor (taken from the patent WO/2014/188000)

Biogas mainly contains methane (50-75%) and carbon dioxide (25-50%). For biogas to be used as fuel it must be upgraded removing unwanted gases, mainly CO2, but also other gas impurities. Upgrading of biogas to CH4 content higher than 90% can not only increase the heating value, but also reduce corrosion caused by acid gas. The most common upgrading methods remove the impurities mechanically or chemically.

The new NEOSUCCESS process, based on an innovative biological approach patented by DTU, (“Methods for upgrading of a fuel gas and succinic acid production”, WO/2014/188000), converts biogas together with a waste stream rich in carbohydrates into biomethane and bio-SA. The new technology provides a novel use of the biological process of fermenting a carbon source to succinic acid, exploiting the consumption of CO2 gas by anaerobic succinic acid-producing microorganisms. The aim of NEOSUCCESS project is to make commercially available this unique process through a containerised plug-and-play configuration conceived to be integrated in biogas plants’ operational workflow.

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