The volume of biogas produced in agricultural areas is expected to increase in coming years. An increasing number of local and regional initiatives show a growing interest in decentralized energy production, wherein biogas can play a role. Biogas transport from production sites to user, i.e. a CHP, boiler or an upgrading installation, induces a scale advantage and an efficiency increase. Therefore the exploration of the costs and energy use of biogas transport using a dedicated infrastructure is needed. A model was developed to describe a regional biogas grid that is used to collect biogas from several digesters and deliver it to a central point. The model minimizes transport costs per volumetric unit of biogas in a region. Results are presented for different digester scales, different sizes of the biomass source area and two types of grid lay-out: a star lay-out and a fishbone lay-out. The model shows that transport costs in a fishbone lay-out are less than 10 Vct m3 for a digester scale of 100 m3 h1; for the star lay-outcosts can go up to 45 Vct m3. For 1800 m3 h1 digesters, these values are 4.0 Vct m3 and 6.1 Vct m3, respectively. The results indicate that cooperation between biogas producers in collecting biogas by means of a fishbone lay-out reduces the biogas transport costs relative to using a star lay-out. Merging smaller digesters into a smaller number of larger ones reduces the costs of biogas transport for the same biomass source area.
A model to describe biogas transport costs in a regional grid is presented. In the model biogas is collected to a central location by transport through dedicated pipelines. Costs have been calculated for two different lay-outs of the grid i.e. star and fishbone lay-out. The costs depend on the covered area and the size of the digesters. Model results show that in a star layout transport costs for small scale digesters are much higher than costs for large scale digesters and costs in a fishbone lay-out are lower than costs in a star lay-out.
This report was written for the municipality of Apeldoorn as a contribution to Cityloops. It consists of designing and planning tools and provides answers for the municipality of Apeldoorn to enable them to move towards a circular construction economy.
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