powertogas h2 electrochaea

http://www.electrochaea.com/uploads/1/1/4/0/11408432/press_release_20130813_-_electrochaea_commissions_foulum_project.pdf
also on
http://www.northseapowertogas.com/news/624

"Press Release
Foulum, Denmark; August 13, 2013
Electrochaea Commissions World’s Largest Power-to-Gas
Demonstration Project Based on Biological Methanation
Electrochaea is pleased to announce the commissioning of its power-to-gas demonstration facility in
Foulum, Denmark. Using a 10,000-liter bioreactor, the project showcases the world’s largest power-togas
demonstration facility based on biological methanation. The project is operated by Electrochaea.dk
ApS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Electrochaea LLC, and sponsored by the Danish Energy Agency
(EUDP), Erdgas Zürich, ewz (the City of Zurich’s utility), E.ON, NEAS Energy, and Aarhus University. It
is being executed with the assistance of Invest in Denmark and with engineering services provided by
NIRAS.
Power-to-gas is an innovative and disruptive concept for grid-scale energy storage. The large and
growing penetration of renewable energy such wind and solar, which produce electricity intermittently
and independent of demand, causes large supply/demand imbalances and stabilization challenges in
the electricity grid. Power-to-gas converts such surplus electricity into methane, the principal
component of natural gas, for injection into the existing gas infrastructure. Because the capacity of
many natural gas networks is practically unlimited for the purpose of energy storage, the energy
storage capacity of power-to-gas far surpasses that of batteries, pumped hydro, and compressed air
energy storage. Once in the pipeline, the gas can be used for power production during peak-hours, as
renewable gas in industry and transportation, and for long-distance energy transmission via existing
pipelines.
The main objective of the Foulum Project is to demonstrate Electrochaea’s biocatalytic methanation
technology at pre-commercial scale. The core of the technology is a single-celled organism – a
methanogenic archaea – that was adapted for industrial use by Prof. Dr. Laurens Mets at the University
of Chicago. The microbe requires only hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce pipeline-grade
methane. At Foulum, raw biogas from an on-site anaerobic digester is used as the source of CO2 while
hydrogen is supplied from high-pressure gas cylinders. The stirred tank reactor used in the project is a
10,000-liter vessel owned by Aarhus University and typically used for research with manure-derived
biogas. It was adapted by Electrochaea for the purpose of the project.
The reactor was successfully inoculated with Electrochaea’s proprietary microbes on July 30, 2013 and
reached sufficient cell density for catalytic carbon dioxide conversion on August 6, 2013. The reactor
has been operated for over 300 hours and currently operates with over 4,000 liters of a high-density
microbial culture, the largest monoculture of methanogenic archaea ever produced industrially. Over
the coming two months, Electrochaea will test the reactor and biocatalyst for system efficiency,
"
August 2013
Sydney's plan for a renewable energy future bets heavily on biomethane and power-to-gas

Mentioned in City of Sydney Renewable Energy MasterPlan
P10.
http://www.electrochaea.com/uploads/1/1/4/0/11408432/sydney-renewable-energy-master-plan.pdf