REPORT – In a postcard landscape, Suez produces gas from sewage treatment plant sludge for 2,500 homes in Marseille.
In Marseille
Umbrella pines line the road, the Calanque de Sormiou is a stone’s throw away, behind a hill with steep slopes. It is in this postcard landscape that Suez produces gas for 2,500 homes in Marseille. And more specifically biomethane, produced from sewage treatment plant sludge. This process is not the most common – biogas is most often produced on farms from agricultural waste – but it has proven itself.
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Sent by pumps from the city station located under the Stade-Vélodrome, this sludge is first concentrated, then passes into large basins called “digesters”. Bacteria, which are activated between 50°C and 55°C, then “digest” them, which generates biogas. But the process does not stop there because this gas would not be of sufficient quality to be injected into the GRDF network. The biogas is therefore then purified of the hydrogen sulphide as well as of all impurities by filtration on charcoal…
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