Methanation of Synthetic Gas - Fundamentals and Process Development

Regarding the provision of energy, natural gas makes a significant contribution. To reduce the dependency on natural gas imports and therewith price fluctuations on the one hand and to use the existing natural gas infrastructure on the other hand, natural gas can be substituted to some extent by synthetic natural gas (SNG). SNG can be produced either from coal or - with special focus on the reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions - from biomass. Considering the thermochemical conversion pathway from the fuel to SNG the process step methanation has high influence on the process efficiency as well as on up- and downstream process steps. Therefore, in this paper the basics of methanation and main process developments are described.