Optimal Group and BOC plan Australia's first bioLNG plant in Tasmania

The Australian company Optimal Group and the firm BOC, part of the Linde group, signed a memorandum at the end of November 2021 to study building Australia's first bioLNG plant. The proposed location is Westbury in Tasmania, where BOC operates a natural gas micro-liquefier. Next to it, Optimal Renewable Gas would build a biogas plant with a capacity of about 2.4 TJ per day, estimated at about 55 million Australian dollars.

How the chain is meant to work

According to descriptions of the project, biogas from waste would feed an upgrading plant, and the resulting biomethane would go to BOC's existing micro-liquefier. The liquefied gas (bioLNG) would be delivered by tanker to BOC and Elgas customers – mainly in agriculture, food processing and other industries without access to the gas grid. An advantage is that the existing combustion equipment is retained: customers can switch from fossil LNG to bioLNG without replacing boilers or burners.

Scale of the project

A capacity of 2.4 TJ per day would mean, with continuous operation, about 876 TJ per year (own calculation), which is several times more than the roughly 200 TJ per year that biomethane from the Malabar wastewater treatment plant in Sydney is eventually meant to reach – so the Tasmanian project would be considerably larger than Australia's first biomethane grid injection project.

What happened next

After the memorandum, Optimal bought a plot of about 2 ha in Westbury for the bioLNG plant. Elgas, a BOC group company, supplies liquefied gas to industrial customers in Tasmania and was to take part in distributing bioLNG to existing customers. Agriculture, food processing and other industries were named among the potential customers.

Limitations and unknowns

The memorandum is not an investment decision, and the project was only to be studied. The confirmed reports found while preparing this entry concern the purchase of land, not the commissioning of the plant. The project is therefore an example of planning; what will be key are feedstock contracts, the financing model and the certification of bioLNG as a renewable fuel.

What this means for Poland

In Poland bioLNG is a topic mainly in heavy transport and in industry without access to the grid. The Tasmanian example shows that a chain of “biogas plant – liquefier – industrial customer” can be a solution for customers far from a gas pipeline, but it requires a stable feedstock base and a partner with cryogenic experience.