Thermoeconomic Analysis of Biomethane Large Scale Production for Cities from Landfill and Sewage Biogas Nilma R. Barsallo, Álvaro I. Ochoa, Lesmes A. Corredor, Maira A. Sierra and Iván Ochoa 2018/04/20

Abstract

Cities have several sources of biogas, i,e, landfills and sewages treatment plants, which are potential sources for producing pure methane. However, methane opportunity cost depends strongly of international oil and local gasoline and Diesel prices, when methane is oriented to substitute liquid fuels. A thermoeconomic model is required to evaluate the energy and economic feasibility to utilize in cities pure methane obtained from biogas of landfill and sewage sources. Authors have developed a biogas purification thermoeconomic model using ASPEN HYSYS® and exergy analysis to take into account variable chemical composition and distances of each biogas
sources to the pure methane production plant. Three alternatives are presented, depending on the biogas rate production and the optimum use of the source. The first one considers crude biogas
compression and transportation to pure methane production plant, the Second one considers electrical generation and the last one considers in situ biogas burning similar to fireplaces.
Projects like this succeed in countries like Panama because lack of fossil energy reservoirs, and the obsolete Diesel technology in urban transportation, enough reasons for validating the simulation for the Panama City’s anthropogenic methane large sources. Economic analysis includes forecast of the total initial investment, investment recuperation, maintenance and operational costs of the plant in order to set the pure methane generated in the plant as a competitive fuel in the national market.

Authors and affiliations

Nilma R. Barsallo1, Álvaro I. Ochoa1, Lesmes A. Corredor1, Maira A. Sierra1 and Iván Ochoa1
1. Department of Mechanical Engineering. Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla (Colombia)

Key words

Thermoeconomics, Biogas, Alternative fuel, Exergy analysis.

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