HomeFAQ's 18. What distinguishes the Blue Tower from a biogas plant?
18. What distinguishes the Blue Tower from a biogas plant?
Technologically:
In a biogas plant, the biomass is literally eaten up in diluted environment by microorganisms without presence of air. As digestion or metabolism product of these micro-organisms, mainly so-called bio-gas is generated. This process is called fermentation or more specifically anaerobe fermentation. Three points should be made:
Biogas basically consists of methane (CH4) as a useful component and carbon dioxide CO2 as ballast. In order to get the gas ignited in an engine, the methane concentration should be at least approx. 40 %.
Biogas arises with temperatures under 100 °C in aqueous diluted environment. Therefore, biogas can be produced from wet or even extremely wet materials - provided they lend themselves for fermentation.
The microorganisms can not digest everything. The lignin - a wood component - can not be fermented for example. Most toxic substances cannot be fermented either. In some cases, the micro-organism did not succeed for example even in fermenting some liquid manure, because the animals producing the droppings were given too much antibiotics. A complete reduction of the organic substance (mineralization) normally is not possible.
On contrary, the Blue tower operates at temperatures well above 500 °C. The input material is completely mineralized. The product gas contains plenty of hydrogen which does not occur in the biogas at all.
Economically:
The input to output ratio for the Blue Tower is around 1 ton of input to 1.4 – 2 MW net electric output. The Blue Tower product gas has an efficiency of around 80%. The Blue Tower does not need additional fuel sources to operate. The Blue Tower takes up very little space. The operating costs for the Blue Tower process is around .02 euros per kilowatt.
