COLHIBRI has reached a key milestone. After completing commissioning at CIDAUT’s facilities, the biogas reforming module has been transported to COGERSA’s waste treatment site in Asturias, where it is now installed and integrated. The team has started the first test campaign directly on real biogas from the COGERSA digesters: the decisive step in moving the technology out of the lab and into an actual operating environment.
COLHIBRI is developing an alternative route for clean cogeneration: converting biogas into renewable hydrogen through a chain of gas conditioning, catalytic reforming and purification, and feeding it to a PEM fuel cell to generate electricity and heat with high efficiency and low emissions.
With the reformer now running on-site, current work is focused on fine-tuning the gas pretreatment stage that precedes reforming. Real biogas carries a range of minor compounds beyond the bulk methane and CO₂, and even at low concentrations these can affect the performance of the reformer and the reactors further downstream. Getting this pretreatment step to remove them reliably is one of the main technical challenges of this phase and a key condition for the system to run robustly over time.
Over the coming weeks, and through to the project’s conclusion in December 2026, testing will move on to the fully integrated modules, with the aim of validating the complete biogas-to-hydrogen transformation under conditions suitable for direct use in a 5 kW PEM fuel cell. This next stage will confirm whether the hydrogen produced meets the quality required downstream, closing the loop between reforming and power generation.
These results will feed directly into the validation campaign at COGERSA, where the full biogas-to-energy chain will be assessed for efficiency, robustness and technical viability, bringing COLHIBRI a step closer to a replicable solution for the sustainable energy valorisation of biogas.
About COLHIBRI: https://colhibri.es/
COLHIBRI is being developed by CIDAUT together with COGERSA, IMATECH, Inbiogas and Jalvasub Engineering. This project, with file number PR-H2CVAL4-C1-2022-0054, has been approved under the first call for ‘incentive programme 4: basic-fundamental research challenges, innovative pilots and training in key enabling technologies within the incentive programmes for the innovative value chain and knowledge of renewable hydrogen’, included within the framework of the incentive programmes for the innovative value chain and knowledge of renewable hydrogen under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.