ETW Energietechnik commissions the first biomethane plant for processing landfill gas in Italy

Reliable biomethane production thanks to ETW SmartCycle® PSA

ETW Energietechnik from Moers has built a biomethane plant in southern Italy in collabora- tion with its long-standing Italian partner Ranieri Tonissi from Genoa. The plant in Taranto, Apulia region, has a capacity of 4400 standard cubic metres of landfill gas per hour and consists of the proven, user-friendly ETW SmartCycle® PSA biogas upgrading system and a downstream NRU ‘Nitrogen Reduction Unit’.

ETW‘s general contractor scope of supply also includes raw gas conditioning, lean gas af- tertreatment with regenerative thermal oxidation (RTO), gas flaring and biomethane feed-in (gate keeper) with post-compression to 25 bar. ‘With the ETW treatment process with NRU, which was specially developed for landfill gas, landfill gas with nitrogen contents of over 20 per cent can be treated to produce biomethane that can be fed into the grid,’ explains Alex- ander Szabo, the responsible Sales Manager at ETW Energietechnik.

Landfill gas is a special gas for treatment. On the one hand, there is a very high concentra- tion of harmful trace substances (VOC: volatile organic compounds) and siloxanes. On the other hand, the gas quality is not constant and there are fluctuations in the gas composition and gas quantity. The longer a landfill is in operation, the more methane is replaced by oxy- gen and nitrogen. In addition, the quantity of gas decreases. This places very high demands on a gas treatment plant. The methane concentration is between 40 and 60 per cent, the nitrogen and oxygen concentration between 2 and 25 per cent and the operating range – i.e. the partial load capacity of the plant – is between 30 and 100 per cent capacity.

None of these points pose any problems for the ETW SmartCycle® PSA with NRU, and the plant in Taranto has been reliably producing biomethane since its commissioning in August 2024. ‘The methane recovery from the landfill gas is a very good value of over 95 per cent,’ adds Alexander Szabo from ETW Energietechnik. The facility consists of six standardised containers, set up in a U-shape with a large covered interior for the PPE technology and NRU. The entire facility was erected in a construction period of only around four months.