The GreenLifTech project consortium held its general meeting in Zaragoza and Huesca. In Zaragoza, the project partner, the Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA) led the meeting, in Huesca the Aragon Hydrogen Foundation (FHa) hosted it.
During the visit to FHa’s facilities, the partners got to know several projects, as well as to observe the progress made so far by the C2MetOH subproject led by FHa within GreenLifTech.
Lidia Martínez Izquierdo, R&D coordinator and Begoña García Muñoz, R&D technician, both at FHa, explained the progress, challenges and next steps of the subproject.
On the other hand, Vanesa Gil Hernández, ARAID researcher at FHa, explained other projects that the company has within the Walqa Technology Park, such as HIGGS, Elyntegration, as well as the operation of the 700 bar hydrogen plant located at the Aragon Hydrogen Foundation facilities.
GreenLifTech project
The GreenLifTech project focuses on developing a technology to convert biogas and captured CO2 into methanol. The initial challenge was dealing with impurities like H2S, ammonia, and siloxane in the biogas, which can be detrimental to the process. This is where the experts in the field come in and look for solutions.
One of solutions is about sinergy with biogas: the project aims to utilize biogas as a feedstock, upgrading it before feeding it into the fix bed reactor to synthesize methanol. The cleaning process will consist of two upgrading steps in series: first, pollutants such as H2S, NH3 and siloxanes that will be eliminated by adsorption in a fix bed reactor. Then the cleaned gas stream containing CO2 and CH4 will be separated by membrane technology to obtain a purified CO2 gas stream that ultimately will be used as feedstock in the methanol reactor.
The project aims to produce clean fuels like methanol from CO2 and biogas in an energy-efficient manner. GreenLifTech focuses on validating the concept and demonstrating its feasibility rather than developing new materials.
GreenLifTech technical setup
Within the technical setup of the project, some technologies and materials are taken into consideration to make the conversion of biogas and co2 into clean fuels possible. Some of them are: reactors, membrane technology, FHa also has instruments for analysing gaseous and liquid streams from the different units that make up the set-up. These are: micro GC, GC-fit and Mass Spectrometer.
The integration of the whole proof of concept is one of the challenges of the project, therefore, the experts are working insistently to achieve the goal. Overall, the GreenLifTech project holds promise for converting biogas and CO2 into clean fuels.
