Sebastian Kolb

Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg | FAU · Department of Chemical and Bioengineering

Supplementary Information to: Elhaus_Volkmann_2024_et_al_Techno-economic evaluation of anaerobic digestion and biological methanation in Power-to-Methane-Systems

Power-to-Methane is a key element for achieving the European climate goals (Paris Agreement) and replacing natural gas. Biological methanation offers the possibility to produce methane from CO 2 and hydrogen by methanogenic archaea. As a green carbon source, the CO 2 from biogas can be used. Green hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis with elec...

Carnot batteries are an emerging thermo-mechanical energy storage technology that enables large scale energy storage with storage durations from several hours up to a few weeks. Especially Carnot batteries based on reversible heat pump - Organic Rankine Cycle systems are promising as they enable the integration of low-temperature heat sources, allo...

Die Defossilisierung des Wärmesektors ist eine der größten Herausforderun-gen der europäischen Energiewende. Ohne drastische Transformation werden stark öl-und gasabhängige Länder wie Deutschland ihre Klimaziele nicht erreichen. Mögliche Entwick-lungsszenarien der Literatur sehen die Elektrifizierung des Wärmesektors durch Wärmepum-pen als eine der...

Supplementary Information to "Environmental assessment of anaerobic digestion and biological methanation in power-to-methane systems"

The reversible operation of the heat pump process and the organic Rankine cycle as a Carnot battery has gained attraction of the scientific community in recent years. Despite numerous publications investigating the potential of such systems as a new energy storage technology, experimental results are scarce. The present work presents the outcomes o...

Methods of computational intelligence show a high potential for short-term price forecasting of the energy market as they offer the possibility to cope with the complexity, multi-parameter dependency, and non-linearity of pricing mechanisms. While there is a large number of publications applying neural networks to the prediction of electricity pric...

Integrated steelworks off-gases are generally exploited to produce heat and electricity. However, further valorization can be achieved by using them as feedstock for the synthesis of valuable products, such as methane and methanol, with the addition of renewable hydrogen. This was the aim of the recently concluded project entitled “Intelligent and...

Erdgas spielt eine zentrale Rolle im heutigen Energiesystem Deutschlands. Auch mittelfristig wird in aktuellen Analysen damit gerechnet, dass die Nachfrage nach Erdgas groß bleiben wird. Gleichzeitig stellt die Diskussion um Treiber, Quelle und vor allem Größenordnung von Methanschlupf während der gesamten Prozesskette die Rolle von Erdgas als Brüc...

Hydrogen imports are considered as a promising pillar for the defossilisation of the German energy system. One of the main concerns when discussing hydrogen solutions is its environmental performance, especially with regard to its greenhouse gas emissions. While a large number of life cycle assessments (LCA) helps to thoroughly understand the impac...

This work investigates the cost-efficient integration of renewable hydrogen into steelworks for the production of methane and methanol as an efficient way to decarbonize the steel industry. Three case studies that utilize a mixture of steelworks off-gases (blast furnace gas, coke oven gas, and basic oxygen furnace gas), which differ on the amount o...

Citation: Hauser, A.; Wolf-Zoellner, P.; Haag, S.; Dettori, S.; Tang, X.; Mighani, M.; Matino, I.; Mocci, C.; Colla, V.; Kolb, S.; et al. Valorizing Steelworks Gases by Coupling Novel Methane and Methanol Synthesis

For the description of the fluidization state of fluidized beds, both time-domain analysis and frequency-domain analysis of high-frequency pressure fluctuations are established approaches. For the detection of agglomeration or defluidization, the variance or standard deviation of the pressure signal or the maximum in the frequency spectrum are comm...

Trickle bed reactors are one of the world’s most employed technologies for multiphase processing, and they have been scrutinized for decades. However, accurate prediction and scale-up of trickle bed reactors are still challenging owing to complex interactions of multiphase flow, interfacial mass transfer, and reaction kinetics. The present computat...

A multi-agent system consists of several computational entities capable of autonomous actions, called agents, which communicate with each other, and have the ability to coordinate their actions and to cooperate. Multi-agent systems received a great interest and attention over time, as they can be seen as a key enabling technology for complex applic...

The valorization of integrated steelworks process off-gases as feedstock for synthesizing methane and methanol is in line with European Green Deal challenges. However, this target can be generally achieved only through process off-gases enrichment with hydrogen and use of cutting-edge syntheses reactors coupled to advanced control systems. These as...

The agglomeration of particles caused by the formation of capillary bridges has a decisive impact on the transport properties of a variety of at a first sight very different systems such as capillary suspensions, fluidized beds in chemical reactors, or even sand castles. Here, we study the connection between the microstructure of the agglomerates a...

Natural gas is an energy carrier of predominant significance for today’s electricity and heating sectors. However, science heavily discusses the actual environmental burden of natural gas mainly due to the uncertainty in up- stream methane losses during its extraction and transportation. In this context, numerous technologies pave the way for the p...

Natural gas plays an essential role in Germany's energy system, both in the heating and electricity sectors. In order to achieve climate goals, numerous technologies aim at substituting fossil with renewable gas. Those technologies start reaching technical maturity, yet they are mostly not economically competitive under the current market condition...

Clean energy for all, as listed in the United Nation’s SDG7, is a key component for sustainable environmental development. Therefore, it is imperative to uncover the environmental implications of alternative energy technologies. SustainableGAS project simulates different process chains for the substitution of natural gas with renewable energies in...

Increasing electricity prices for private consumers manifested the idea of price boosting renewable energy sources in Germany's public opinion. Literature however widely concurs that wind and photovoltaics have a reducing effect on spot market electricity prices. The underlying merit order effect led to historically low exchange prices in the past...

This article focuses on fuel quality in biomass power plants and describes an online prediction method based on image analysis and regression modeling. The main goal is to determine the mixture fraction from blends of two wood chip species with different qualities and properties. Starting from images of both fuels and different mixtures, we used tw...

The German energy system is highly dependent on the use of fossil gas. It is considered to be a “green” fossil energy carrier whose importance is even expected to rise in times of high shares of volatile renewable electricity in the grid. However, to reduce the dependence on imported natural gas and further increase the share of renewables in the e...