IPPTS Anaerobic Digestion Community Website

Small-scale anaerobic digestion can provide a practical way for farms, food businesses, institutions and communities to treat organic residues while producing biogas and digestate. But reducing the size of an anaerobic digestion plant does not automatically make the technology simple or inexpensive.

A small digester still needs a reliable feedstock, bi...

What are the main uses of biogas? The answer ranges from generating electricity and heat to replacing natural gas in pipelines, fuelling vehicles and providing cooking fuel at household scale.

Biogas is unusually versatile because its principal energy-carrying component is methane. Raw biogas can be burned directly in suitable equipment after the gas t...

UK biogas funding has played a major part in shaping the anaerobic digestion industry we see today. Over the past two decades, government support has encouraged renewable electricity from biogas, rewarded useful renewable heat and, more recently, shifted strongly towards producing biomethane for injection into the gas grid.

That history matters because...

A biogas engine converts the energy in methane-rich biogas into mechanical power, normally to drive an electrical generator. Put the engine and generator together, and you have what is commonly called a biogas generator or gas-engine generator set.

This remains one of the most established ways of producing electricity from anaerobic di...

A biogas heating system can be one of the simplest and most efficient ways to use the gas produced by an anaerobic digestion plant. Instead of converting the biogas into electricity first, the gas is burned in a suitable boiler or process heater and its energy is used directly as heat.

That option is sometimes overlooked. Combined heat and power (CHP) ...