A new research paper prepared by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and with the support of the project CRONUS is now available in the Chemical Engineering Journal. The paper is entitled “Biofilm mass transfer and thermodynamic constraints shape biofilm in trickle bed reactor syngas biomethanation” and was released in November 2024. In this article, the authors investigated the syngas biomethanation process carried out in trickle bed reactors at its boundary conditions to explore the limits of the process, focusing on syngas composition and mass-transfer conditions potentially limiting process performance. The process was found to be robust when exposed to CO excess, but highly sensitive to H2 excess, which caused severe inhibition even under small amounts of excess H2. This implies that biomethane purity comparable to natural gas can be achieved by addition of renewable H2, but this requires precise control to avoid process failure.
This article was conducted in the frame of Functional prototype 3 “Syngas Biomethanation” of CRONUS implemented in Copenhagen by DTU.
