What is Bio-LNG? “Choosing Bio-LNG is actually quite logical.”
Posted on
04/03/2022Category
Blogs, NewsImagine if we could get trucks to run on organic household waste, sludge, manure or agricultural waste. On substances that normally serve no purpose. Sound too futuristic? Not at all. Rolande has been building a network of LNG filling stations throughout Europe for years, where you can fill up not only on LNG – liquefied natural gas – but also on Bio-LNG. In this blog Lot explains why you should be choosing Bio-LNG when you want to make your heavy duty transport sustainable.
Since March 2021, Lot van Aubel has been responsible for Rolande’s Bio-LNG purchasing and sales, and for customer management and sales support. ‘I do the purchasing of the ready-made product. It is my job to make sure that it meets our quality requirements, and that the whole chain is certified. Lot actually comes from the financial sector. ‘But in less than a year, I’ve really fallen for sustainable fuel. The sector is super interesting and is developing very rapidly.’ She smiles: ‘And I have to say, I’m suddenly paying more attention to our energy use at home as well.’
‘LNG has been around for years and is made from natural gas from Qatar or America, for example. Natural gas is liquefied to make it easy to transport. It is cooled to -162 degrees. This reduces its volume by 600 times. This enables large quantities of natural gas to be easily transported by ship.’
Choosing Bio-LNG means less use of fossil fuels
‘For years, LNG has been one of the cleanest fuels in heavy road transport. It is the leading alternative to diesel. But with increasingly stringent environmental and climate requirements, big companies want a more sustainable alternative – because natural gas is still a fossil fuel. The use of fossil fuels releases many harmful substances such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and more CO2 in the atmosphere causes global warming. The Climate Agreement concluded in 2019 also stipulates that fossil fuel must be phased out of road transport by 2040. Many companies already want to anticipate this, so choosing Bio-LNG is actually quite logical.’
‘With Bio-LNG, we no longer use fossil sources, nor do we use sources that could be used in some other way for humans or animals. The raw materials are waste. These go into a fermenter, which produces gas that, after post-treatment, consists of almost 100% methane. Just like natural gas, in other words. That gas is then liquefied, giving you Bio-LNG.’
‘At the moment we still get most of our Bio-LNG from Scandinavia. They are way ahead of us in this respect, because many places there have no natural gas network in the ground like ours. But we also look to Germany, because there are many developments for Bio-LNG production there as well. And we are co-initiators of our own fermentation plant in Leeuwarden, next to a large waste processor. It would be amazing if we could get started quickly, because that would mean that in one fell swoop we could offer 9.2 million kilos of Bio-LNG of Dutch origin. That would represent a major step towards Rolande’s mission: emission-free heavy road transport.’
In conversation with
