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11 min ago 2 min read
A system under development by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) that could boost biogas generation by almost half has been verified by the Japan Environmental Sanitation Center (JESC).
The technology, called AdBio, is designed to sort and recover biomass such as food waste and paper from municipal waste and unsorted food waste.
This enables recovery of biogas in methane fermentation systems.
Now verified, AdBio is recognised as a technology that enhances the efficiency of biomass sorting and recovery and improves degradation rates in methane fermentation.
This could improve biogas generation by around 40%, according to MHI.
“This system can be installed at existing methane fermentation facilities as well as newly built plants, supporting efficient green energy generation while ensuring steady raw material supply and operational stability,” stated the company.
MHI also claims the system can respond flexibly to changes in various societal conditions that result in changes in processing volumes.
This includes the amount food waste and sewage sludge a community produces, energy needs and energy prices, and population size.
The technology is verified under a project run by JESC to verify the technical aspects and performance of waste treatment technologies developed by private companies and other organisations.
Much of Japan’s biogas sector focuses on processing municipal food waste, agricultural residues, and sewage sludge into renewable electricity and biomethane.
For example, commercial waste and school lunch scraps are processed in urban centres. EnviWaste’s plant in Osaka converts around 17 tonnes of food waste daily into electricity.
Japan is also rapidly advancing its biogas purification to replace liquefied natural gas imports.
The country imports around 65 million tonnes of LNG per year, second only to China.
Companies like Asahi Kasei have successfully demonstrated zeolite-based purification technology that produces biomethane with yield and purify of over 99%.
A separate trial held by Japan-based Toray Industries found that its membrane technology can cut costs in biogas purification by 70%.
