US-based Bloom Energy makes biogas debut
California-based Bloom Energy said November 8 it had made its debut in biogas with the deployment of a fuel cell meant to process dairy cow manure into a form of renewable energy.
A 1 MW fuel cell was deployed at the Bar 20 Dairy Farms in California.
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“To turn cow waste into renewable electricity, Bar 20 Dairy Farms combined a methane digester, gas clean-up skid, and Bloom Energy fuel cells for an end-to-end, waste-to-electricity solution,” Bloom Energy explained.
The company said the skid would remove any impurities before biogas containing up to 65% methane would be used for what it considered a renewable form of electricity utilising an electrochemical process driven by solid-oxide fuel cells.
The produced electricity is enough to meet the energy needs of the farm. Any excess would go to the grid to feed electric vehicle charging stations in California.
Bloom Energy moved into the green hydrogen space in July when it teamed with clean-energy focused Heliogen in California.
Bloom Energy provided the electrolyser, while Heliogen utilised its solar power system to break water into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which is an emerging component of the energy transition.
“Finite resources don’t mean finite energy, rather, it means doing smarter things with the resources we have,” Bloom Energy executive Vice President Sharelynn Moore said.