Industrial gas major Air Liquide will increase its biomethane footprint in the US with two new production units which will produce biogas from manure feedstock from dairy farms.
Located in Center Township, Pennsylvania and Holland Township, Michigan, the units are equipped with a total production capacity of 74 GWh (gigawatt hours).
Once passed through an anaerobic digester, the waste will be recycled for use on the farms while the biogas will be separated and purified into biomethane (also called renewable natural gas) and injected into the natural gas grid.
According to Armelle Levieux, member of Air Liquide’s Executive Committee and Vice President of Innovation, the two new biomethane production units will help reinforce the company’s presence in the US biomethane market.
“These investments in the US are in line with the priorities of our strategic plan ADVANCE for 2025, which inseparably links growth and a sustainable future,” she said.
“Biomethane is part of the portfolio of solutions developed by Air Liquide to support the decarbonisation of its customers in the industry and transport sectors.”
In the US, the primary pathway for biogas has been through landfill gas collection, which today accounts for nearly 90% of its biogas production, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).
©Air Liquide
There is also growing interest in biogas production from agricultural waste, since domestic livestock markets are responsible for almost one-third of methane emissions in the US.
Figures from the American Biogas Council suggest that the US has more than 2,400 sites producing biogas in all 50 states: 473 anaerobic digesters on farms, 1,269 water resource recovery facilities using AD, 102 stand-alone systems that digest food waste and 566 landfill gas projects.
For comparison, Germany has nearly 10,000 operating digesters and some communities are essentially fossil fuel free because of them.
The Council claims that – if fully realised – the new biogas systems in the US could produce 103 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity each year and reduce the emissions equivalent of removing 117m passenger vehicles from the road.
Despite its potential, the market for biogas and biomethane still remains small, with biomethane production estimated between 0.2bn to 0.4bn cubic feet per day (bcf/d) in 2023 versus domestic geologic gas production of just over an estimated 103bcf/d.
If the full estimated potential for biomethane in the US were completely realised, various publicly available forecasts peg biomethane production between 2 to 4 bcf/d by 2050.
