Dairy methane seminar 13.11.2017

1. TEKNOLOGIAN TUTKIMUSKESKUS VTT OY
Conversion of methane
through gas fermentation to
valuable products
13.11.2017
Juha-Pekka Pitkänen
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

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Status of methane fermentation
 Aerobic methanotrophic gram-negative bacteria Methylococcus
capsulatus listed in EU feed registry
 Until 2005 produced from Norvegian natural gas as fishmeal
 Now U.S. companies Calysta and Cargill building a facility for
producing 20 kt/a feed from shale gas in NouriTech J.V.
 Danish company Unibio producing feed from natural gas
 Other similar methanotrophic species like Methylocystis parvus
accumulate poly-hydroxyalkanoates (PHA) like poly-
hydroxybutyrate (PHB), which could be used to produce
biodegradable plastics
 E.g. U.S. company Mango Materials is developing this

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Bioplastic: Poly-hydroxybutyrate (PHB)
 Biodegradable plastic
 Global production 2014: 54 kt [1]
 Potential market in the future even 50%
of the current plastics market [1]
 Applications in compostable bags and
packaging as well as in bone fix screws
 Price: 4400 $/t (2008), 6500 $/t (South-
Africa) (approx. 5x the price of
polypropylene ~1500 $/t). Prices are
coming down [1]
https://muovienkierratys.wordpress.com/biohajoavat-muovit/
1. E4tech, RE-CORD and WUR (2015) “From the Sugar Platform to biofuels and biochemicals”. Final report for the European Commission, contract No.
ENER/C2/423-2012/SI2.673791

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Use of stranded biogas as raw material in bioprocess
Protein Carbohydrate Lipids PHB Total
Fed-batch 29 % 11 % 5.6 % 48 % 93 %
Steady state 63 % 12 % 6.6 % 0.3 % 82 %
Currently VTT’s 30-liter prototype could produce 250 g/week of cell mass.
The plan is to take this forward as a new project

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Cost calculation based on farm biogas
Case 1b: Only feed product within farm
Case 3: Central PHB extraction from 20 farms
Case 1b Case 3 / farm
Profit, k€/a -45 15
Assumptions: 67 t_CH4/a/farm (c. 1000 pigs),
1.1 g_CDW/g_CH4 yield, 80 % conversion, 2 g_CDW/L/h productivity
1 €/kg for protein price, 3.5 €/kg for PHB price
0.00
20.00
40.00
60.00
80.00
00.00
20.00
40.00
1 2 3
Annual costs
Other fixed
Capital charges
Labour
Transportation
Chemicals/solvents
Water
Electricity
LPG
Nutrients
Revenues0.00
20.00
40.00
60.00
80.00
100.00
120.00
140.00
1 2 3
k€/year
Annual costs
Other fixed
Capital charges
Labour
Transportation
Chemicals/solvents
Water
Electricity
LPG
Nutrients
Revenues

7. 7
Farmer
New Company
End-users
Feed end-users
Machine workshop
Plastics
manufacturer
Feed manufacturer
€
Equipment
€
Equipment
& organism
Feed
Plastic
€
€
Feed
Fuel
Pros and cons
- Big risk to the newco
+ Almost no risk to farmers
- Logistic problems and costs
- Challenge to attract the manufacturers
+ Attract more farmers
- Difficult starting point to the newco
- Market development of PHB unclear
Possible business model

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When profitable assuming only feed product?
 If feed would be the only product,
how much methane is needed per
year to make the process profitable?
 3547 tonnes of CH4/year yields 3472
tonnes of single cell protein (90%
dry matter content, 61% protein
content) (c. 50,000 pigs)
 If protein is sold at 1 €/kg price, the
income would be able to cover the
production costs

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Conclusions
 It is possible to make value-added products from biogas, BUT…
 The feed production alone is not profitable unless…
 Much cheaper (or subsidised) equipment
 Developments in drying process
 Very large production units
 Centralised PHB-production requires an application for the PHB to
increase the market volume as currently there is no clear demand
(despite publicity of the plastic rafts in the Oceans)

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Acknowledgements
 Funding:
 VTT iBET_Gasfe 2014-2015 on methane
fermentation
 Tekes_TUTL_Gasfe 2015-2016 on
methane fermentation
 Coworkers
 Anu Tamminen; cultivations and ”running
the shop”
 Leo Ojala; PhD student in MOPED project,
cultivations and calculations
 Dorothee Barth; calculations etc.
 Julia Nyström; MSc student on methane
cultivations
 Peter Blomberg; calculations etc.
 Marja Nappa; techno-economic eval.
 Malin Bomberg, Irina Tsitko; population
studies by sequencing and microscopy
 Atte Mikkelson, Heli Nygren, Anna-Liisa
Ruskeepää, Tuulikki Seppänen-Laakso,
Riitta Alander, Marita Ikonen, Päivi
Matikainen, Ulla Vornamo, Tuuli Teikari,
Mirva Pyrhönen, Airi Hyrkäs; analytics

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TECHNOLOGY FOR BUSINESS