The International Energy Agency’s description of Bioenergy is as follows:

‘Bioenergy is renewable energy derived from biomass. Biomass is defined as biological material which is directly or indirectly produced by photosynthesis. Examples are wood and wood residues, energy crops, crop residues, and organic waste/residues from industry, agriculture, landscape management and households’.

https://www.ieabioenergy.com/bioenergy-a-sustainable-solution/

By various pathways, the renewable energy carried within this biomass can be converted into solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels which can be used to produce:

ü  Heat.

ü  Co-generated heat and electricity (Combined Heat and Power or CHP).

ü  Renewable gases.

ü  Gaseous and liquid transport fuels.

Photosynthesis, Anaerobic Digestion, two sides of the same coin.

As defined by the International Energy Agency, biomass is biological material directly or indirectly produced by photosynthesis.

On the other side of that photosynthesis coin is Anaerobic Digestion. Anaerobic Digestion (AD) is the passive biological process at the heart of a biogas plant. AD has evolved over billions of years into biological perfection.

Whilst photosynthesis is the light driven construction of organic material, AD is the passive, biological deconstruction, re-purposing, and value-adding of organic material in the absence of oxygen and light. These are anaerobic conditions.

The biomasses fed into a biogas plant are referred to as substrates and there are hundreds of possible substrates suitable for processing by AD. These substrates can be solids, semi-solids, and liquids.

The process of AD occurs within the ‘digesters’ of a biogas plant, so we can think of these digesters as the point of convergence between the products of photosynthesis and AD. 

Irrespective of the substrates or co-substrates fed into a biogas plant, AD only ever produces two primary products: 

1.   Biogas

2.   Digestate

AD is a total resource recovery and value-adding process without peer. All the substrates fed into a biogas plant are converted into biogas and digestate with zero waste.

Biogas plants, BIG is better.

The three golden rules of biogas:

1.   The bigger the size of the biogas plant, the lower the cost of energy production.

2.   The bigger the size of the biogas plant, the more products and services that biogas plant is able to produce and support.

3.   The bigger the size of the biogas plant, the more expansive and socioeconomically impactful the circular economy systems enabled by that biogas plant.

GCE’s biogas plants are based on these three golden rules.