First meth­ane has been pro­duced in the BioCat Project

On Monday at noon, Dor­is Hafen­bradl, CTO at Elec­tro­chaea (IBB net­work mem­ber), intro­duced the seed cul­ture of Archaea into the BioCat react­or, and with­in four hours they were able to see con­ver­sion of car­bon diox­ide into meth­ane. By sev­en hours after the inocu­la­tion, the react­or was con­vert­ing above 90% of car­bon diox­ide in a bio­gas stream (37% CO₂ / 63% CH₄ bio­gas com­pos­i­tion). In the pro­ject, the part­ners are excited and proud of this achieve­ment. How­ever, it does not mean that the pro­ject is imme­di­ately striv­ing to reach a com­mer­cially pro­duct­ive cul­ture in the BioCat react­or. Over the next couple of months there is still a lot to do in terms of com­mis­sion­ing the plant and the biocata­lyst, and only when that is com­plete will the pro­ject start its ​‘com­mer­cial cam­paign’ and begin injec­tion into the gas grid via HMN’s pipeline. Source: BioCatProject