Seat and Aqualia work hand in hand with a consortium of companies led by these two to make possible reduce by 80% the CO2 emissions produced by gasoline cars. The idea is to use waste water for biofuels.
And is that a treatment plant purifies the necessary water over a year to allow a car circled the earth, up to 100 laps to be exact, that's more than a trip around the world.
The initiative called LIFE + Methamorpohis project arises with the idea of meeting two fundamental and clear objectives:
- To take advantage of as much as possible the scarce resource that we have on the planet as it is Water. Scarce? Yes, in case you do not have the data in mind, only 2,7% of the water available on Earth is fresh and of that small percentage only 1% is available for our use.
- Reduce considerably pollution generated by traffic, especially in large urban centers, betting on alternative energies.
These aforementioned companies want to achieve the "revolution in urban mobility and the development of the cities of the future" and for this it is not enough for them to use biofuels through biomass but they go further.
LIFE + Methamorpohis has a clear idea of power convert wastewater into biofuel.
For this, These waters must undergo a process of fermentation, purification and finally enrichment so that the biogas is ready for later use.
Waste water treatment
The project proposes to be able to demonstrate two systems for wastewater treatment Relevant on an industrial scale: the Methagro prototype and the Umbrella prototype.
Umbrella
Umbrella will optimize energy purification of the water from the treatment of the organic fraction selected through the implementation of anaerobic processes (absence of oxygen) and autotrophs (organisms capable of synthesizing all essential substances for their mutualisms from inorganic substances)
An anaerobic membrane reactor (AnMBR) and the Anammox ELAN system of autotrophic nitrogen removal.
Finally, the biogas produced is treated in the ABAD cleaning and refining system, the biomethane obtained will allow the assessment of the waste for vehicle use by complying with the automotive standard DIN 51624.
This prototype will be demonstrated at the ECOPARC municipal waste treatment plant in Montcada i Reixac, in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area.
methargo
methargo has the objective of give solution to the uncontrolled generation of slurry.
With an upgranding system that is based on membranes and direct use in the transport sector or its injection into the natural gas distribution network.
This prototype has been designed to be installed in the Porgaporcs agri-food plant owned by Ecobiogas and located 35 km from Lleida.
Results and financing
Seat FCC Environment cars will carry out tests with more than 120.000 km in total to test this biofuel and obtain its results, hoping that it will be possible to have this alternative and ecological fuel in addition to 100% Spanish as its promoters highlight.
In the event that the studies went as expected, any compressed natural gas car could use it.
LIFE + Methamorpohis is financed with the funds of the LIFE program of the European Union although there is still more, in addition to Aqualia and Seat, there is also the aforementioned consortium which includes the Catalan Energy Institute and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area or Gas Natural, among others.
The advantage of this new biofuel is very clear, if a plant treats about 10.000 cubic meters per day biomethane can be obtained for 150 cars so that you could circulate a hundred km a day and by car.
In Spain 4.000 cubic hectometres are purified annual water so that the cars that can circulate with waste water through this project becomes a great fan in addition to the enormous reduction of greenhouse gases.
For this reason, drivers have high expectations for this alternative fuel.