Analysis demonstrates high efficiency in CH4 and H2S oxidation in biogas, indicating reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Sewage treatment plants (STP) with anaerobic reactors usually adopt flares to control odors and reduce the greenhouse gas potential effect from methane present in biogas. The efficiency of biogas combustion is mainly related to temperature, gas residence time in the flame, and excess oxygen supply for the complete oxidation. The use of fully enclosed flares maximizes this efficiency, but its use is still developing in STPs in Brazil. In this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate the in situ efficiency of enclosed flares for methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) oxidation of biogas produced from anaerobic reactors in six STP in the State of Paraná, with a treatment capacity from 20,000 up to 300,000 inhabitants. Biogas and combustion gas measurements revealed 95.1-99.8% performance for CH4 oxidation and 72.2-98.7% for H2S. Comparison to estimations based on literature or simple temperature measurements demonstrates the importance of in situ evaluation of flare performance, especially for better greenhouse gas emission inventories. The avoided emissions per capita varied between 25 and 115 kgCO2eq/inhab.year, being higher for the smaller STPs.
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Kaminski et al. (2025) studied this question.
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