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.
