The past decade has been the warmest in the last 140 years, since we began keeping records of temperature. In order to minimize further increases in temperature, we need to make our economic development truly sustainable by fulfilling the commitments of the Paris Agreement. Production of biomethane from electricity from renewable sources and from waste or wood biomass is currently one of the most promising ways to store large amounts of energy. We have conducted an analysis of processing technologies for the production of biomethane from renewable carbon sources with a special focus on wood biomass. We have described the biological methanation that occurs with the help of microorganisms and the catalytic methanation, which is based on the reaction with a catalyst. Prior to methanation, the synthesis gas extracted from wood biomass needs to be cleaned of solids parts and various sulfur and nitrogen compounds to values below 1 ppm. Based on a review of existing technologies and pilot projects, we estimate that the key problem is the provision of sufficiently pure carbon dioxide for the methane process. Prior to injection into the gas grid, biomethane needs to be cleaned of carbon dioxide and improved to increase the methane content, which must be similar to the existing pipeline network, i.e. about 98%.
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