Re: DIG-L: Question about biogas & engines

[Vanhauw@aol.com]

There are numerous practical examples of the of biogas to fuel internal 
combustion engines, both outside and inside the USA There should be no 
difficulty locating several applications. For instance, waste water treatment 
plants such as the ubiquitous Boston Bay WWT plants recover biogas from its 
digesters to generate electricity. Similarly, several municipal landfills 
around the USA recover its biogas to produce electricity. Denmark, France, 
the UK, Germany, and Belgium are at the forefront of recovering biogas from 
manure digesters to produce kw.
There is a wide range of thoughts on what treatments should these biogases be 
subjected to before being used as fuel. Most operators simply remove the 
water present in the biogas, leaving it to the engine manufacturers to design 
engines which will cope with the impurities inevitably included in the biogas 
(significant maintenance costs); other Operators are seriously evaluating 
maintenance costs against initial investments in biogas clean up technologies 
such as has been developed by Acrion Technologies (although Acrion's 
technologies are mainly  aimed at biogas contaminant removal and separation 
into methane and carbon dioxide as feed stocks for a variety of commercail 
applications).
IC engine manufacturers, such as Caterpillar, offer a range of engines 
specifically designed to burn biogas.  You might like to contact them.
If you need detailed information on this important subject, please let me 
know.

Good luck!
    Pierre
Pierre M. van Hauwaert
AplusB, Inc.
4448 Habersham South - Unit 202
Cleveland, Ohio 44143 - USA
Tel (216) 486 1915
Fax (216) 486 3992
e-mail: vanhauw@aol.com