ETW Energietechnik Awarded Contract for Biomethane Plant by Berlin Municipal Cleaning Services

ETW Energietechnik has, according to its own information, received a contract from the Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe (BSR) for the construction of a biomethane upgrading facility. The plant, developed jointly with the engineering firm Rytec GmbH, is intended to upgrade landfill gas to biomethane in the future, thereby unlocking energy potentials that have so far remained unused.

The facility is designed to process up to 700 normal cubic meters of landfill gas per hour. The biomethane produced could, in the medium term, be integrated into existing energy systems and would also contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Central to the project is the use of landfill gas as a feedstock for renewable gas—an approach that could gain increasing importance in the biomethane market.

Upgrading landfill gas is considered technically demanding: landfill gas often contains high concentrations of contaminants, and its composition can fluctuate significantly. Over time, methane emissions from landfills are also increasingly replaced by oxygen and nitrogen emissions, resulting in variable gas flows. For this reason, the planned facility is designed for flexible operation between roughly 40 and 100 percent capacity. In combination with a downstream nitrogen reduction unit (NRU), it will also be possible to bring gas streams with nitrogen contents of more than 22 percent up to grid-injection quality. The company notes that relevant operating experience has already been gained at a reference plant in Taranto.

For its own energy supply, a combined heat and power (CHP) unit will additionally be integrated and operated using the off-gas generated by the process. This will allow part of the plant’s electricity demand to be covered while increasing the overall methane yield to more than 95 percent. Overall, those involved believe the project highlights the potential to systematically integrate landfill gas into biomethane production and thereby tap additional sources of renewable gas.