Novo Silico for Biogas Facilities…
Your Situation: With ongoing efforts to achieve net zero carbon emissions, the controlled methanization of biomass in biogas facilities is becoming increasingly important. The natural anaerobic fermentation process is very well understood, relevant microbes are known, and quantitative models publically available. Yet, the natural process efficiency of biogas facilities is limited. Even with costly mechanical or chemical preprocessing of biomass substrate, the commercial appeal of biogas-based power generation is often below competing fossil-fired, hydro- or wind-powered generation.
Our Proposal: We deliver process acceleration and efficiency enhancement in three stages:
- Extend input: We design suitable catalysts and pathways to process new or additional substrate types, or to degrade substrate contaminants. These include for instance plastics and textiles in domestic waste, as input for digesters in biogas production;
- Optimize process: We compute optimal operational parameters such as flow rate, temperature, pH, required additional microbes and/or enzymes based on observed substrate input and scheduled biogas output. We validate these results in silico by suitable simulation before feeding them live;
- Accelerate output: For given substrate types and biogas demand, we determine biochemical reaction sequence and rates. We infer constraints and inhibitors limiting these rates, based on known and validated anaerobic digestion models. We determine and simulate operational parameters to enhance these rates.
