Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 3rd July 2025 Issue no. 1169
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ETW Energietechnik commissions first biomethane plant for processing landfill gas in Italy
ETW Energietechnik has built a biomethane plant in southern Italy in collaboration with its long-standing Italian partner Ranieri Tonissi from Genoa. The plant in Taranto, Apulia region, has a capacity of 4400 standard cu.m 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 after-treatment 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% can be treated to produce biomethane that can be fed into the grid," explains Alexander Szabo, the sales manager at ETW Energietechnik responsible for the project.
Landfill gas is a special gas for treatment. On the one hand, there is a very high concentration 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 oxygen 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%, the nitrogen and oxygen concentration between 2% and 25% and the operating range - i.e. the partial load capacity of the plant - is between 30% and 100% 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%," adds Alexander Szabo.
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 around four months.
27th February 2025