Biopact reports on the construction of a €10 million (US$13 million) biogas complex in Germany that includes a dedicated field of corn watered by wastewater, a pipeline and a combined heat-and-power plant.
Corn will be raised on a dedicated plot of 10 square kilometers (2471 acres). The entire plant's biomass (grain, cobs, stems, leaves) will be fed to a fermentation process which produces biogas. The unpurified biogas will be pumped to the city of Braunschweig, via a 20 km (12 mile) pipeline, to a combined heat-and-power plant which converts the energy contained in it with an efficiency of almost 90%. The heat and power will satisfy the total energy demand of some 7000 households. The biogas maize will be irrigated with waste water from Braunschweig.
According to a German bioenergy expert, "This is the perfect closed loop. Waste water, renewable biomass, biogas, heat and power. This holds a lot of potential, also for the developing world":
According to some German analysts, locally produced biogas can replace all of the country's natural gas imports from Russia by 2030, others put its potential at half that amount. The green gas can be purified to natural gas standards and fed to the gas grid. It is also being used more and more often as an automotive fuel, particularly in Central and Northern Europe.
Excellent preoject! Except for the choice of corn. Algae in solar collectors mounted on the roofs and over the parking lots in this city would do the same thing with no land destroyed by chemical agriculture.
But it does prove that biogas can meet energy needs.
Also the CO2 release from this system is problematic. with algae in solar collectors, instead of corn, the cO2 is reabsorbed instead of released into the atmosphere.
Additionally this system does not produce biodisel as a transportation fuel. Like an algae system can. Another whoops, when it comes to best investment of capital.
Posted by: amazingdrx | December 12, 2006 at 11:12 AM
Europe Energised-----will lights go out in 2050?
Aachen,09/10---10/10/2008
http://www.wissenschaftsparlament.eu/en
Posted by: emily | October 10, 2008 at 04:52 AM
Check this forum
http://www.schlattmann.de/en-biogas/forum/viewtopic.php?t=78
Posted by: ivan | September 19, 2009 at 07:53 AM
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Posted by: NFL shop | June 04, 2011 at 03:03 AM