Economic and ecological evaluation of biogas plant configurations for a demand oriented biogas supply for flexible power generation

Future biogas plants concepts need to be able to meet the requirements of highly renewable electricity systems and to supply biogas according to the varying demand for long-and short-term balance power generation. In this regard, this thesis focused on the identification of biogas plant concepts for flexible power generation, as well as on ranking them regarding their economic and life cycle performance.

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The transformation of the power supply towards renewable energy (RE) sources will depend on a large scale of fluctuating RE sources, primarily of wind energy and photovoltaics. However, the variable power generation of these renewable sources will lead to an increased need of flexible power producers in order to balance differences between energy generation and consumption. Among the different types of RE sources, biogas plants have the advantage that their input biomass and the produced biogas can be stored and electricity can consequently be generated on demand. Since electricity from biogas has not been used to balance fluctuations of intermittent RE in the past, new concepts are required. These concepts should be able to meet the requirements of highly renewable electricity systems and to supply biogas according to the varying demand for long-and short-term balance power generation. In this regard, this thesis focused on the identification of biogas plant concepts for flexible power generation, as well as on ranking them regarding their economic and life cycle performance.