HOW TO TRIPLE THE BIOGAS PRODUCTION BY 2030 THROUGH SUSTAINABLE BIOMASS Jens Bo Holm-Nielsen, Center for Bioenergy and Green Engineering, Aalborg University, Denmark
The European biogas platform looks promising and expanding by 2030 and further beyond.
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or biogas generation we do not need to focus any more on energy crops from croplands suitable for food and feed production. The focus should rather shift to byproducts from primary agriculture and animal manure, including deep litter bedding materials.
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In the primary agriculture sector, a huge amount of straw products can be supplied as byproducts from grain production. Using straw for biogas has not been an easy task in the past, as its dryness and the presence of lignocellulose make straw a complex feedstock. But thanks to research and technology developments occurred
over the last 5-10 years, we have learned to overcome these barriers, mainly by good pretreatment routes: notably, by mechanical pretreatment, long retention time and recycling between the digestion steps. Straw adds valuable total solids and volatile solids carbon sources to the anaerobic digestion process, leading