All over the world there is a strong interest and also potential for biogas production from organic residues as well as from different crops. However, to be commercially competitive with other types of fuels, efficiency improvements of the biogas production process are needed. In this paper, results of improvements studies done on a full scale co-digestion plant are presented In the plant organic wastes from households and restaurants are mixed and digested with crops from graze land. The areas for improvements of the plant addressed are treatment of the feed material to enhance the digestion rate, limitation of the ballast of organics in the water stream recirculated in the process, and use of the biogas plant residues at farms. Results from previous studies on pre-treatment and membrane filtration of recirculated process water are combined for estimation of the total improvement potential. Further, the possibility to use neural networks to predict biogas production using historical data from the full-scale biogas plant was investigated. Results from investigation of using the process residues as fertilizer are also presented.The results indicates a potential to increase the biogas yield from the process with up to over 30 % with pre-treatment of the feed and including membrane filtration in the process. Neural networks have the potential to be used for prediction of biogas production. Further, it is shown that the residues from biogas production can be used as fertilizers but that the emission of N 2 O from the fertilised soil is dependent on the soil type and spreading technology.

Microalgae are considered as potential sources for biodiesel production due to the higher growth rate than terrestrial plants. However, the large-scale application of algal biodiesel would be limited by the downstream cost of lipid extraction and the availability of water, CO 2 and nutrients. A possible solution is to integrate algae cultivation with existing biogas plant, where algae can be cultivated using the discharges of CO 2 and digestate as nutrient input, and then the attained biomass can be converted directly to biomethane by existing infrastructures. This integrated system is investigated and evaluated in this study. Algae are cultivated in a photobioreactor in a greenhouse, and two cultivation options (greenhouse with and without heating) are included. Life cycle assessment of the system was conducted, showing that algal biomethane production without greenhouse heating would have a net energy ratio of 1.54, which is slightly lower than that (1.78) of biomethane from ley crop. However, land requirement of the latter is approximately 68 times that of the former, because the area productivity of algae could reach at about 400 t/ha (dry basis) in half a year, while the annual productivity of ley crop is only about 5.8 t/ha. For the case of Växtkraft biogas plant in Västerås, Sweden, the integrated system has the potential to increase the annual biomethane output by 9.4 %. This new process is very simple, which might have potential for scale-up and commercial application of algal bioenergy.

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A case study is described in which the activated sludge process is replaced with a microalgae-activated sludge process. The effects on the heat and electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions were evaluated in a system model, based on mass and energy balances of biological treatment and sludge handling process steps. Data for use in the model was gathered from three wastewater treatment plants in Sweden. The evaluation showed that the introduction of microalgae could reduce electricity and heat consumption as well as CO2 emissions but would require large land areas. The study concludes that a 12-fold increase in the basin surface area would result in reductions of 26-35% in electricity consumption, 7-32% in heat consumption and 22-54% in carbon dioxide emissions. This process may be suitable for wastewater treatment plants in Nordic countries, where there is a higher organic load in summer than at other times of the year. During the summer period (May to August) electricity consumption was reduced by 50-68%, heat consumption was reduced by 13-63% and carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 43-103%.

The wet anaerobic digestion process is a widely used method to produce biogas from biomass. To avoid the risks involved with using the digestion waste as a fertilizer, this work investigates the possibilities to use the solid digestate as an energy resource to produce heat and electricity, which could save some energy currently consumed by the plant and, therefore, may increase the overall efficiency of a biogas plant. Simulations were conducted based on real data from the Växtkraft biogas plant in Västerås, Sweden as a case study. Results show that it is necessary to dry the solid digestate before combustion and include flue‐gas condensation to recover enough heat for the drying process. When a steam turbine cycle is integrated, the generated electricity could cover 13–18 % of the total electricity consumption of the plant, depending on the degree of dryness. In addition, reducing the digestion period can increase the carbon content (ultimate analysis), the heating value, and the mass flow of the solid digestate. As a result, the production of electricity and heat is augmented in the steam turbine cycle. However, the production of biogas is reduced. Therefore, a comprehensive economic evaluation is suggested to optimize a biogas plant that uses the solid digestate from a wet anaerobic digestion process as an energy resource.

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