The new sanitation framework, approved by the federal government in the middle of last year, made Brazil very promising for the cogeneration market. The Federal Government's goal is to ensure that 99% of the Brazilian population has access to drinking water and 90% to sewage treatment and collection.
One of the applications that has been growing over the last few years in the country and in the world is the use of biogas eliminated from sewage treatment plants, farms, landfills and industries as fuel for the generation of electrical and thermal energy (cogeneration). Brazil also has new biomethane plants that are being installed in several regions of the interior, where there is no natural gas network.
Microturbines x motor generators
To carry out the cogeneration process, microturbines have great advantages over motor generators, the most commonly used equipment for this application.
The superiority of microturbines is clear due to their low need for maintenance and high system reliability, since, unlike motor generators that are adapted motors, microturbines were designed for continuous use and with a specific line for use with biogas, which accepts a high variation of methane concentration and the presence of up to 5000 ppm of H2S (hydrogen sulphide) in the biogas.
Microturbines have a large installed base worldwide
This difference has already been noticed by public and private companies that want to take advantage of biogas as an energy source in their plants and have started to accept a higher Capex in order to have a lower Opex, in addition to better reliability and availability of the cogeneration system.
In Europe alone, there are more than 200 units of microturbines installed, producing more than 22 MW of electrical energy, exclusively from biogas. In some of these installations, microturbines replaced old motor generators. Many of these units are expanding, and over the years more microturbines are added to existing systems as the volume of biogas increases. An example is the landfill in the commune of La Ciotat, France, which started operation in 2007 with a few units of the 65 kW model and today has a total of 18 units in operation.
In Brazil, in 2009, the Minas Gerais Sanitation Company (Copasa) installed one of the largest biogas cogeneration systems in the world in one of its sewage treatment plants, producing 2.4 MW of electricity. Recently, Ambev installed 5 microturbines, which generate more than 1.2 MW.
One of Fluxo's distribution lines in Brazil is Capstone Turbine Corporation, the world's largest manufacturer of microturbines for cogeneration, with more than 10,000 units supplied worldwide in the last 20 years. Fluxo, in partnership with Capstone, has all the know-how and expertise to supply the very latest and most advanced in cogeneration systems, from a 65kW microturbine to complete modules of 1 MW or more.