Bioclear earth puts its expertise to use in optimizing biogas production in the European innovation project MICRO4BIOGAS

Alongside solar and wind energy, biogas is an important step in the energy transition.There are approximately 18,000 biogas installations in Europe, which account for half of the global biogas production.

From waste stream to energy: the benefits of biogas production and digestate

A favourable aspect of biogas is that its production is robust and does not depend on weather conditions. In addition, biogas is a so-called energy carrier, which means that it can be stored for later use, for example as a fuel. Another advantage of biogas production is that the energy is produced from waste streams. Furthermore, optimal biogas production ensures that no methane is released into the atmosphere and remaining residual flows (digestate) are used as soil improver and fertiliser. In this way the cycle with the soil is closed. In addition, the use of biogas is CO₂-neutral.

The wonderful world of biogas production

The production of biogas has been a black box so far. You could compare a reactor with our intestines, in which bacteria, fungi and yeasts take care of breaking down food and converting it into building blocks and energy. This process can run optimally if the right micro-organisms are present, but it can also be disturbed, for example, by eating contaminated food. Similar processes take place in a biogas reactor, but exactly which ones and how they work together is yet unclear. Because of this gap in knowledge, there is still a lot of room to optimise these processes.

The purpose of the MICRO4BIOGAS project

The European cooperation project MICRO4BIOGAS, part of Horizon 2020/ European Green Deal, aims at identifying, developing and validating bioaugmentation strategies for anaerobic digestion that are technically feasible and economically viable. Based on our expertise and experience in projects such as Biopulping (pre-treatment of lignin-containing biomass) Swillpower (anaerobic digestion on a small scale), Greenstep (boosting digestion processes), Power 2 Methane (methane production with methanogenic micro-organisms) we have been asked to participate in this project. Within this project, we co-operate with the Universities of Valencia, Dresden and Ghent and companies such as Gasterra and Darwin.

Meet Micro4Biogas: Optimising microorganisms for efficient and sustainable fuel

[DRAFT] Watch this video to learn about Micro4Biogas, a European research and innovation project that uses applied microbiology to optimise the production of biogas, a fuel made from organic waste. The contents of this video may be subject to change following revisions and approval by the European Commission's Project Officer. More information and news on our website https://micro4biogas.eu/ Micro4Biogas has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101000470.

Together we are investigating whether we can improve the production of biogas by:

Developing a roadmap: what does the future of bio fermentation look like in Europe?
System optimisation: how can reactors be designed even better so that the microbiology can function optimally?
Stability: how can we increase the stability of reactors?
Better yield: how can we increase the biogas yield?
Higher quality: how can we improve the quality (purity) of the end product?
Greater production speed: how can the residence time in the reactor be reduced, in other words how can the conversion of the residual substances be accelerated?

Understanding the black box by applying DNA technology

In order to develop a good bioaugmentation strategy, you first need to know what happens in existing reactors. Bioclear Earth is asked to unravel the microbiological processes involved in biogas production. We do this by sampling existing biogas plants and analysing the DNA from the samples. This produces a huge amount of data, which we then process with specially developed bioinformatics tools. This allows us to map microbiological networks of collaborating micro-organisms (consortia). We then look at which consortia produce the best results on a laboratory scale. Subsequently the best performing consortia are tested at full scale.

In addition to the technical content aspect of the project, we are involved in assessing the environmental impact, economic profitability and social impact of these production processes. The ultimate goal is to produce an affordable bioaugmentation kit that can improve the production of existing biogas plants or help start up new plants.

Added value of this project for other sectors

The knowledge we gain in this project in the field of identification and application of microbiological consortia can be very interesting for use in other biological ecosystems in the future, for example in agriculture or for industrial production processes in which microbiology plays an important role.