ETW Energietechnik commissions Italy’s first biomethane-from-landfill-gas plant

ETW Energietechnik from Moers has built a biomethane plant in southern Italy in collaboration with its long-standing Italian partner Ranieri Tonissi, based in Genoa.
The plant in Taranto, Apulia region, has a capacity of 4400 standard cubic metres of landfill gas per hour and consists of the ETW SmartCycle® PSA biogas upgrading system and a downstream NRU ‘Nitrogen Reduction Unit’.
ETW‘s general contractor scope of supply also includes raw gas conditioning, lean gas aftertreatment with regenerative thermal oxidation (RTO), gas flaring and biomethane feed-in (gate keeper) with post-compression to 25 bar.
"With the ETW treatment process with NRU, which was specially developed for landfill gas, landfill gas with nitrogen contents of over 20% can be treated to produce biomethane that can be fed into the grid,’ explained Alexander Szabo, sales manager at ETW Energietechnik.
The company explained that landfill gas is a special one for treatment.
On the one hand, there is a very high concentration of harmful trace substances (VOC: volatile organic compounds) and siloxanes.
On the other hand, the gas quality is not constant and there are fluctuations in the gas composition and gas quantity.
The longer a landfill is in operation, the more methane is replaced by oxygen and nitrogen.
In addition, the quantity of gas decreases. This places very high demands on a gas treatment plant. The methane concentration is between 40% and 60%, the nitrogen and oxygen concentration between 2% and 25% and the operating range – i.e. the partial load capacity of the plant – is between 30% and 100% capacity, said the organisation.
It added that none of these points pose any problems for the ETW SmartCycle PSA with NRU, continuing that the plant in Taranto has been reliably producing biomethane since its commissioning in August 2024.
"The methane recovery from the landfill gas is a very good value of over 95%," stated Szabo.
The facility consists of six standardised containers, set up in a U-shape with a large covered interior for the PPE technology and NRU.
The entire facility was erected in a construction period of around four months.