Hybrid membrane-vacuum pressure swing adsorption: low-cost technology for simultaneous biomethane and carbon dioxide production from biogas.

Biogas production and upgrading allow to reduce methane and carbon dioxide emission through simultaneous production of biomethane and CO2. Membrane and vacuum pressure swing adsorption technologies can achieve this goal in a single unit, but currently these technologies have a high upgrading costs. Here, we developed a hybrid configuration, which benefits from the advantages of both technologies while having a lower upgrading cost and cost uncertainty. The hybrid configuration delivers a biomethane stream with methane purity > 96 % and methane recovery > 99 % as well as a CO2 stream with CO2 purity > 95 % and CO2 recovery > 93 %. The new hybrid process showed ∼ 15 % reduction in upgrading cost in the most probable cases. The hybrid configuration is robust and less complex compared to benchmark technology. The hybrid configuration achieves high efficiency and could enable a new generation of upgrading technology for simultaneous biomethane production and CO2 capture.