Gevo has revealed that its renewable natural gas business recently achieved record production levels.
“I am pleased that we achieved an annualized production rate of approximately 402,000 MMBtu in May, exceeding our previous record of approximately 401,000 MMBtu in March,” said Staci Bogue-Buchholz, vice-president and General Manager of Gevo’s RNG facilities. “These results show we have hit our stride from a production perspective, and I think we have room for further improvement too. The system is running well.”
On June 21, gevo’s RNG production experienced a slight disruption due to a severe flooding event that impacted the Rock Valley, Iowa community.
As a result of our mitigation efforts, we still achieved monthly RNG production of 29,082 MMBtu in June inclusive of planned downtime for maintenance, and the system has returned to its normal operational state.
The company does not expect this to materially impact the annual production target of approximately 400,000 MMBtu.
Bogue-Buchholz said: “While Gevo was lucky, many of our neighbours and surrounding communities were not so fortunate. We are heartbroken for our community as they deal with this tremendous impact and are looking for opportunities to support recovery and resiliency from future flooding.”
Gevo’s RNG is produced by capturing methane biogas from manure digestors across three dairy farms in northwest Iowa.
The biogas is then delivered by pipeline to a centrally located gas upgrading unit where it is brought to pipeline-quality RNG and injected into the local gas pipeline.
RNG is biogenic methane that substitutes for fossil-based methane, or “natural gas”.
The benefit of RNG from a process like Gevo’s, which is made from renewable carbon and mitigates fugitive methane emissions during production, is that the overall mitigation of greenhouse gases is large. The resulting carbon negative RNG may be purchased and claimed in California and other low-carbon fuels markets to fuel compressed natural gas heavy duty vehicles.
Gevo’s natural gas production hits record levels
