Accident Analysis of European Biogas Stations

The number of biogas stations continues to grow. Biomass is currently a very important source of renewable energy in Europe and bio-energy will play a key role in achieving the ambitious targets. It is generally known that the number of accidents increases with higher number of biogas units; therefore the role of their safety is increasingly important. The history of production of biogas in the industrial scale is relatively recent; there is not so much experience with safety as it is with other industrial processes. Experience can be taken from similar units, mainly from chemical industry. This paper is intended to describe a probability of possible major accidents associated with the operation of biogas stations. For 13,171 European biogas stations, more than 800 accidents were found out within the last 10 y, but most of them were accidents without any serious consequences; only three of them were serious with consequences for human lives.