AMMONOX-Ammonia for enhancing biogas yield & reducing NOx.

The continuously increasing demand for renewable energy sources renders anaerobic digestion to one of the most promising technologies for renewable energy production. Due to the animal production intensification, manure is being used as the primary feedstock for most of the biogas plants. However, biogas plants digesting liquid manure alone are not economically viable due to the relatively low organic content of the manure, usually 3-5%.Thus, their economical profitable operation relies partly on increasing the methane yield from manure, and especially of its solid fraction, usually called as ‘manure fibers’, which is not so easily degradable.
Laboratory tests have shown that ammonia is very effective for the pre-treatment of manure fibers and other lignocellulosic biomasses but also for the post-treatment of manure fibers after anaerobic digestion (digested manure fibers). It has to be emphasized that apart the increased methane yield, the ammonia used can be recovered and recycled from the liquid manure resulting in no consumption of chemicals and actually in production of excess ammonia.
AMMONOX is an innovative concept focusing on an integrated approach for sustainable and cost-efficient energy production in the form of methane from manure. The three pillars of AMMONOX are a) the optimisation and application of Aqueous Ammonia Soaking (AAS) as a moderate and sustainable chemical treatment for enhanced methane production from manure fibers and lignocellulosic biomasses, b) the application of innovative ammonia recovery technology and c) the coupling of the excess ammonia obtained from manure with the catalytic elimination of NOx emissions when the biogas is used for subsequent electricity generation with gas engines.