%0 Journal Article
%T Assessment of optimal location for a centralized biogas upgrading facility
%A Dalia Streimikiene
%A Valerii Havrysh
%A Vitalii Nitsenko
%A Yuriy Bilan
%J Energy & Environment
%@ 2048-4070
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0958305X18793110
%X Since the 1990s, the volume of biogas produced in the world has been increasing. Biomethane (upgraded biogas) is a more versatile renewable fuel. Biogas transportation from production sites to upgrading facilities induces a scale advantage and an efficiency increase. Therefore, exploration of costs and energy use of biogas transportation using dedicated infrastructure is needed. A mathematical model to determine the optimum location for a certain biogas upgrading plant has been presented. It was developed to describe a local biogas grid that is used to collect biogas from several digesters and to deliver it to a central upgrading point. The model minimizes operational and maintenance costs per volumetric unit of biogas. The results indicate that cooperation between biogas producers in collecting biogas by means of a star layout reduces the cost of biomethane production (investment costs by 22.4¨C24.8% and operating and maintenance costs by 1.7¨C10.9%) relative to using a decentralized method. Merging smaller digesters into a smaller number of larger biogas upgrading plants reduces the biomethane production costs for the same biogas volume source
%K Biogas transportation
%K star layout
%K biomethane
%K efficiency
%K location
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X18793110