Managing Methane – From Mining Bitcoin to Making Sustainable Jet Fuel

Turning Methane From A Climate Bomb To A Resource

Methane (CH₄), the main component of natural gas, is a greenhouse gas (GHG) 28x more potent than CO2. So, methane emissions can accelerate global warming in the short term. The only “good news”, is that it lasts 12 years in the atmosphere instead of centuries for CO2.

But even when finally destroyed in the upper atmosphere, it still causes a greenhouse effect by transforming into CO2.

So methane emissions are equally if not more important than CO2 emissions when it comes to climate, making it one of the most important GHGs.

Methane is produced from many sources, many of them directly linked to human activities.

The first one is fossil fuel, with natural gas leaks as a primary source, but also leaks from coal mines and oil deposits.

Another one is agriculture, which happens when organic matter ferments in the absence of oxygen. This mostly happens in the digestive system of ruminant animals like cattle, sheep, and goats (enteric fermentation). However, it can also happen in flooded rice paddies and any pile of organic matter with poor oxygenation.

Lastly, another major source are landfills, rife with buried organic matter decomposing into methane. Wastewater stations are another similar source of organic matter that would produce biogas if left alone.

Methane could be an even bigger problem due to “fire ice”, a form of solidly frozen methane (methane hydrates) found in the deep ocean, as well as methane deposits locked in ice in the Arctic.

Climate warming could destabilize these natural stockpiles of methane, leading to more emissions, leading to more warming, leading to more destabilization, in a catastrophic feedback loop. We discussed in further detail this topic in “Managing Methane May Be Key to Meeting Climate Goals – Where Does it Come From and What Is Being Done About It?”.

But this should not be all doom and gloom. Methane is a valuable energy resource and a powerful source of organic material that can be used for industrial purposes.

A new method recently discovered could even help turn methane from landfills into sustainable jet fuel.

From Trash To Jet Fuel

A key issue with the utilization of biogas is that it requires one of the two options:

1. Building an extensive pipeline network to bring it to industrial and urban centers in order to replace natural gas from fossil fuels.
2. Find a way to use it on-site.

This limitation is because biogas is very volatile, and cannot be transported in that form easily over long distances. It is a very different hydrocarbon with longer chains (like oil) which are easy to transport in a denser liquid form.

In parallel, some economic sectors are very hard to decarbonize, like aviation, which still relies 100% on liquid hydrocarbon to provide a fuel dense enough to power flight.

So it would make a lot of sense to collect biogas from landfills and wastewater stations, and turn it into valuable jet fuel.

We discussed in detail biogas and how it is currently utilized in our article “Carbon Neutral Biogas – Top 5 Biomethane Stocks ”.

Plasma For Jet Fuel Production

Researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, and the Xi”an Jiaotong University in China have discovered a way to improve a method utilizing methane, called atmospheric nonthermal plasma (NTP). One great advantage of this method is that it can take CO2 and methane, and turn it into useful hydrocarbons at room temperature, which drastically lowers the capital needed and the complexity of the project.

The issue with NTP is that it is only able to produce very simple hydrocarbon compounds like formic acid (HCOOH), ethanol (CH3CH2OH), isopropanol (CH3CHOHCH3), and acetic acid (CH3COOH).

In a scientific publication titled “Long-Chain Hydrocarbons from Nonthermal Plasma-Driven Biogas Upcycling”, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers announced they managed to generate more complex hydrocarbons using the NTP method.

They discovered that when you use NTP on a gas mix rich in methane and low in CO2, the final result contains a lot more complex hydrocarbons. It also yields gaseous products, primarily syngas (H2 and CO), as well as liquid-phase alcohols and acids.

Syngas is the primary feedstock for almost the entire petrochemical industry. Oxygenated products, such as alcohols and carboxylic acids, can be converted into saturated long-chain hydrocarbons as well.

So, most of the methane (biogas) from landfills can be converted into petrochemical feedstock and liquid long-chain hydrocarbons used to produce jet fuel.

Efficient And Green Process

The cherry on the cake is that by controlling the concentration of methane, the researchers managed to control the composition of the final product.

So the process could be further fine-tuned to yield the exact hydrocarbon we need to produce carbon-neutral jet fuel from methane emissions.

Because NTP creates a plasma in atmospheric conditions, it does not require heat or pressure. This drastically reduces the energy requirement, meaning that the process could be entirely powered by renewable energy sources.

The End Of Methane Wastes

This new utilization of plasma to turn methane into jet fuel is one among many innovations looking to utilize methane that was until now wasted.

Another example of such innovation is how waste methane is also being used to mine Bitcoin. This is especially relevant for methane from sources like remote oil wells or coal mines. This type of methane is usually flared, its energy wasted and a large part of the methane sent into the atmosphere un-burned.

This shows how short-term criticisms of innovations, like the energy consumption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, or the impossibility of turning jet fuel “green”, are often short-sighted and fail to take into account the possibility of synergy between new technologies.

Methane Utilization Companies

1. Greenlane Renewables Inc. (GRN.TO)

Greenlane specializes in biogas upgrade, or the process of adding biogas generation to existing facilities like wastewater treatment plants or landfills. With 140 systems deployed globally, it is the #1 in the industry.

Greenlane stands much ahead of its competition by the total volume of biogas produced with its machinery, even ahead of industrial giants like Air Liquid. It is also worth noticing that except for Air Liquid and Wartsila (for which biogas is just a small part of total activity), the largest competitors of Greenlane like Prodeval, DMT, or Bright biomethane are not publicly traded.

The company offers 3 different technologies for biogas production (membranes, water wash, and PSA-Pressure Swing Adsorption), which is the best fit depending on the local conditions and feedstock. This allows for the removal from the gas of contaminants like nitrogen, CO2, oxygen, or potentially toxic impurities.

In September 2023, Greenlane launched a new product line with key-in-hand designs for each biogas generation sector (sugarcane residues, landfills, manure, etc.).

It is the only provider able to offer all 3 solutions, making it a good pick for clients interested in adopting the best possible technology for their unique circumstances.

A key growth sector for the company will be Brazil (a global agricultural powerhouse), where it recently signed an agreement to establish industrial-scale volume production.

The agreement was signed with ZEG Biogás, 50% owned by VIBRA, previously the fuel distribution unit of Petrobras, the national oil company. The goal is to reach production at 75+ sites in 5 years.

As it is not a producer of biogas, but a seller of the machinery to produce biogas, Greenlane should be seen as a “pick and shovel” type of stock, with its sale reflecting the pace of adoption of biogas solutions globally. And the largest publicly traded stock in this category.

As a company specializing in engineering solutions to collect biogas, Greenlane should benefit greatly from constant improvements in monetizing and utilizing this resource. It is able to get biogas not only from landfills but also from large agricultural sites, allowing it to cover and make useful 2 of the 3 major sources of methane emissions.

2. Biokraft International AB (BIOGAS.ST)

BioKraft sells and produces biogas in Sweden (230 GWh biogas and bioLNG), Norway (155 GWh bioLNG) and South Korea (60 GWh compressed biogas).

In April 2023, the company decided to enter the German market with 240 GWh future generation in 2 projects planned to be finished in 2025.

It has a total of 875 GWh of biogas and 825 GWh of bioLNG new projects in the pipeline, planned to be finished by 2025-2026.

This would upgrade the current production capacity of 445 GWh to 1,200 GHw by 2026. The long-term target for the company is to reach a total of 3 TWh (3,000 GWh) by 2030. Almost all the new projects will supply their feedstock from manure and agro-based waste.

The company has suffered some losses from low sale prices for power and gas in the last few quarters, especially in Scandinavia. This makes the company partially a bet on a rebound of European gas prices.

This supply of methane could later on be further utilized with plasma for the production of jet fuel or syngas, improving the profitability of these operations.

Between its aggressive growth targets and its current unprofitability, Biokraft is the best fit for investors willing to take a risk and bet on the company turning around, in part thanks to its move toward the German market and maybe a turn of the EU gas market as a whole.