Performance Study of a Water Scrubber for Biogas Purification

Abstract

Presence of impurities like carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide reduces the heating value of raw bio-gas makes it less efficient compared to natural gas. A purification system is required to maximize its potential. Among the processes used for biogas purification, water scrubbing is considered as most extensively used and cheapest method. So, this project emphasizing the design and construction of a water scrubber for bio-gas purification for low pressure, low water flow rate using both iron wool and marble as packing material by varying the marble number as well. Counter current mechanism of water and raw bio-gas is used for the purification. The height to diameter ratio 24 was maintained for the water scrubber. Performance test was carried out for water flow rate of 0.33 liter/minute and 0.25 liter/minute. Only iron wool, combination of iron wool and marble has been used as packing material. The results shows that, combination of iron wool and marble as packing material gives the better results. Also when the number of marble increases, percentage of methane increases to maximum value of 84.54%. The results also show that small variation in water flow rate does not have much more effect on percentage of purification.