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I have followed landfill methane for a while now. Here is a good site from the EPA (US).
http://www.epa.gov/lmop/
Does anyone have any first-hand knowledge of these projects? Are there any benefits to designing landfills with the intent to recover the methane versus what we do now which is retroactively 'mine' the methane?
Of course there are benefits, Keithster-one of the major ones being cutting the release of methane, a greenhouse gas, and a lot lower volume of waste to be buried. The problem is the same as all recycling-waste separation costs exceed the value of the products. If costs were not a problem we could recycle all the metals, turn the plastic and tires back into oil, make all the compost to replace chemical fertilisers, and feel very virtuous.
The problem is Americans don't want to hand-sort garbage for slave wages. Why don't you volunteer?
I saw a news story back in the 80's about a town in WA state. They had scales on the garbage trucks and they weighed the garbage collected from each household and charged them accordingly. This incentivized people to remove recyclables from their trash.
Everywhere I have lived, they simply charge a flat rate and people discard whatever they want. Driving up the price would be one simple way to reduce the amount going to landfills and increase the pre-sorting of recyclables.
In Japan, I believe they are required to pre-sort their trash into 14 different categories.
Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama
14?!?
I live in Tokyo and do three, burnable, unburnable and recyclable (cans, glass).
I can't find the article I read that mentioned 14 categories but here's a quote from the NYT.
How Do Japanese Dump Trash? Let Us Count the Myriad Ways
This article is from 2005. The one I saw was from earlier this year. I guess I need to be more specific as garbage collection varies from city to city just as it does here.
Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama
Yokohama garbage collection guide
Burnable Garbage
Non-burnable
Cans, bottles and PET bottles
Plastic Containers/Packaging
Recycle paper
Used Cloth
Spray Cans
Dry Cells
Small Metal Items
Oversized Items
Apparently some people take this quite seriously.
More specifically...
phreefallin,
Is that what passes for trashy behaviour in Japan?
Bad jokes aside, its a good idea,and wouldn't be onerous while the garbage is fresh. Probably helps hold down rats, too.
I was going to call him a garbage "nazi", but I think that term gets thrown around too often :)
Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama
Hello TODers,
Interesting mini-thread on recycling. Although I posted this before, please consider how badly Mexico recycles:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4916749.html
-------------------------------------
Litter choking streets throughout Mexico
Activists say public isn't only culprit — leaders and companies are also culpable
Mexican environmental officials say that only several dozen of Mexico's more than 2,500 cities, towns and villages have a landfill or other kind of municipal garbage dump.
-----------------------------------------------
Please click link for photo and much more text!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Okay, I get what you are saying.
And yes, my town has a similar list of garbage requirements. But 99% of the time my trash is only the three above mentioned categories. I only have three trash containers.
On the rare occasion I have to throw out a battery it has to be on the 4th thursday of the month. I thew out a matteress (futon) once, and I had to pay 500yen (5$) for a sticker to do that.
Its not nearly so severe as you'd think. The only one going through my garbage is the local alley cat :-)
Here in Sweden almost all trash goes directly to a district heating central and are burnt for energy. And yes, the furnaces do not emit poisonous gases, apparantly.
Recycleable or hazardous waste are supposed to be sorted and left at local recycling stations, of which several are located in most neighbourhoods, supposedly within walking distance (I live in the countryside and thus have a 2 kilometer walk to the recycling station). At the least people in general sort out paper and glass, but you could also sort metal, plastics and cloth. Rare categories like oils, car batteries, kitchen appliances, electronics etc are picked up twice a year outside the local firestation, or can be left year-round at the main recycling station, which features some 30-35 different categories of recycling containers.
Trash disposal at the household are solved differently, at my old dwelling they weighed everything automatically. At my current residence it's a flat fee, but bio-degradable waste should go into black bags, burnable into white bags, and they are sorted automatically - white bags goes to district heating, black bags goes to a local biogas fermenter unit, which produces pure methane and soil/fertilizer. The biogas serves some of the local buses, the soil/fertilizer goes back to the farms.
Landfills still exist in Sweden, but there aren't a lot of them, and I guess only non-usable trash like plaster, rock-wool insulation, fiberglass etc goes there.
There are discussions if the recycling system is wasteful, energywise, but people don't have to recycle, everything can go into burnable waste if they wish, although it would be illegal to put batteries and other hazardous waste there. Not that anyone would be caught, that is.
Anyway, the entire recycling system requires fossil fuels. Or maybe the biogas could be used to fuel the waste trucks in the future. I guess eventually people will burn their waste in the backyard, and you can imagine what that will do to the environment in the cities...
The upcoming shortage of fossil fuels will cause us to consume less, and therefore produce less waste, so it might play out nicely enough anyway.
When our youngest stops using diapers, we will switch to emptying the trashcan every four weeks, instead of two weeks as we do now. All biodegradable kitchen waste goes into our own composts and back into our vegetable patch.
The local council here in Hastings, New Zealand has a good system.
You can only put out 'official' orange plastic rubbish bags for collection, and you have to pay for the bags. Thus, the fewer the bags of rubbish you throw out, the cheaper it is.
What's even better is that the recycling collection is done on the same day as the rubbish collection. So you put all your 'rubbish' (or garbage for our US friends) out at the same time.
We have gone down from putting out one bag of (land-fill) rubbish a week, to only putting one out every 3 weeks. We now put out more recycling than rubbish.
By the way, there are lots of great rubbish-reducing ideas out there. After recycling, I would say composting is the biggest way to reduce the amount of 'waste' you throw out. And a really good suggestion I saw recently was to build a bird table, and then feed the birds your left-overs.
Landfills have to have gas collection and venting systems already, to prevent methane buildup, so collection is a non-issue. Gas prices have to be pretty high however, to justify the costs of power generation from this gas.
It is a lot cheaper if you can find a way to simply burn it for heating purposes somewhere nearby.
Memphis light gas and water has made an arrangement with a company to purchase the landfill gas. It is in operation I believe and has been for a year or two I think. Its costing them less than NG cost, but how its worked out I don't know.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
Austin bought 4 MW of landfill gas generation over a dozen years ago. There are dozens, if not hundreds, in operation today in the USA. I am surprised it took Memphis so long (competing with cheap coal ?)
Best Hopes for universal use of land fill gas instead of just flaring it off,
Alan
Alan,
MLGW is owned by the citizens and the top jobs are political appointments. The recent stories from the press about their situation with scandals and more is a litany. Though being part of TVA the rates in that town are reasonable. Though the stories will soon appear with the heat about the high bills, as does each winter.
One fiasco that they did was start a venture running fiber optic cable for high speed for business and even to citizens in the future. Went no-where (hmmm) and now is being sold at a loss the citizens of Memphis.
The political chaos in that city is huge. Criminal prosecutions, misdeeds in office at all levels it seems. Conspiracy to hire a stripper to take comprising photos of the mayor (called King Willy by many these days) to force him out of office. The stripper had to be taken back to Nashville for probation violation of a previous sentence, And she was also a flight attendant.
Memphis behind, lol, I lived in Atlanta and Memphis, and know many other cities. Memphis is truly something. A big small town. Has its share of major corporations founded and moved there, and the largest bond selling office outside wall street too.
as for flaring off the gas. Many years ago they built some soccer fields on top of a landfill. They are located in a park area called "shelby farms". A buddy of mine had a job long ago of painting the lines on the field. He discovered one night that the crack were letting gas out, because he fired it up. Well a few nights later he got it in his head that it would be cool to have his brother and a few friends out for a "weenie" roast using the gas and take pictures etc. Well all went well into a big pocket was lit and the gas flared up into the night sky and people on a busy road say it and called the fire department. The "guys" ditched the picnic stuff in the car and then acted like they saw it and were there to check it out. Well thats what I 'heard" anyway. They now have tapped it and drain it off every so often I hear.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
My father in law designs brick factories. They've designed several that went in next to land fills to use the landfill gas to fire the brick. This is apparently much cheaper than buying regular NG. the downside is it's less predictable. With standard NG, you can count on firing your brick X number of hours at a predictable temperature. With the landfill gas, the temperature must be constantly monitored and the firing time adjusted bc/ you just can't count on a steady input to your kiln. Nevertheless, when and where possible, this approach is cheaper for brick manufacturers and also shields them from seasonal variations in NG prices.
Landfills have to have gas collection and venting systems already, to prevent methane buildup, so collection is a non-issue.
But the issue is the gas is not JUST methane. You have Nitrogen, Sulfur and other gas mixed in. These things should be accounted for in the design, thus making it non-trivial.
Better not to throw anything away:
http://www.zerowaste.org/case.htm
A big part of the problem is that almost nobody cooks whole foods from scratch any more. Most people (Americans, I am referring to here) don't even know how.
Processed foods are highly packaged foods. That accounts for much of the household waste generated.
How true is this? Don't manufacturers have an incentive to use everything? We joke about what goes into sausages, but I imagine that there isn't a lot of waste; what I would throw out, a manufacturer would be able to sell as livestock feed.
I suspect manufacturers are much much better about using economies of scale to avoid waste than most consumers could ever be. Unless you somehow do aerobic composting & have a fish pond for leftovers, a major food manufacturer is probably better than you. I know I just through out a chicken carcass when I've taken the meat off of it.
I found one article, http://www.ncpa.org/studies/s165/s165.html
which implies that the packaging is a solution rather than a problem. I don't know how biased it is, but 40% more household waste in Mexico convinces me.
The whole "cook things yourself" (while tastier and better for you) seems more wasteful, all things considered. It seems more like nostalgic thinking than rational thinking.
Depends on what packaging is used for the 'raw' ingredients surely. If you buy meat wrapped in just butcher's paper, place fruit & veg straight into reusable bags, and buy other packaged ingredients according to the largest and simplest forms of packaging available (e.g 50kg sacks of rice or flour), then this surely produces far less waste than buying pre-prepared individual frozen meals that often come with 3 or 4 layers of packaging.
It certainly costs a lot less, but yes, requires more effort.
You count packaging, largely plastic, some metal (cans) a paper as a zero cost.
Reducing the solid waste stream is, quite frankly, not a major social benefit.
I would rather throw away avocado skin & pits, peach & plum pits, chicken bones, etc than throw away non renewables that generate GHG.
Due to NIMBYs, finding solid waste disposal sites is a problem in some parts fo the country, but hardly a big deal in the overall picture.
Packaging and processing is bad. Composting is good (not possible for me), eating low on the food chain is good.
Energy spent processing and transporting food is bad.
I will take my farmer's truck delivering Creole tomatoes (25 cents/lb cheaper than WalMart 9 blocks away due to simpler supply chain BTW) and okra (NA at WalMart) and mustard greens (likewise) to Zara's corner grocery 3 times/week. Harvested that morning. I walk there, take them home, prepare them and eat them :-))
The farmer uses recycled cardboard boxes most of the time. he takes his empties back and accepts any of a certain size that Zara's gets from other suppliers.
Processed food is largely unnecessary. I am shocked when I visit Phoenix grocery stores how little real food they have and how much hyper-processed "Hot Pockets" etc. etc. they have filling an entire store. 80% of that "food" did not exist 30 or 40 years ago and should disappear.
Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are MUCH bigger problems that solid wastes for our societies.
Best Hopes for Reducing US food processing by 90%,
Alan
A landfill in my city that sits on forest preserve property was closed about 10 years ago and electrical generation began. According to FP info the plant produces 9mw and puts 7mw into the grid enough to power supposedly 7000 houses thru 3 Caterpillar gen sets.
Keithster's question is would there be benefits to redesigning our dumps, not whether there are currently methane harvesting projects. I think there would, but its probably not economic at today's prices for the recycled materials.
In answer to the questions on experience and design, my answers are yes.
Regulations already require recovery of methane above certain size limits for both new and existing landfills. However, beyond the minimum requirement for flaring or incineration (or clean up for other sale and use), the regulations are silent on addition requirements.
In designing new landfills, one must take into consideration the rate of refuse deposit (and the patterns that one anticipates using so that when the methane extraction wells are placed in service, the maximum recovery of methane is realized for this type of project. Note that the gas is a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, a number of other organic compounds (which go by the acronym NMOCs: non-methane organic compounds), a few inorganic compounds and water. Treatment of the extracted gas (these are usually active systems with gas extraction under vacuum without excessive air inleakage) are designed to knock out water.
As far as projects are concerned, we sometimes see the gas burned as a substitute for natural gas (with a lower heat content than NG) in standard boiler (process steam heat) or burned in internal combustion engine(ICE)/generator combinations. The gas can also be burned in standard combustion turbines to generate electricity. Currently, there is approximately 800 MW of installed electrical capacity designed for use of landfill gas.
One of the tricks is the proper stacking of refuse and timing since the methane generation varies both with time (rate of decomposition) and moisture. It takes some time to establish the anaerobic conditions that promotes the growth and support of the methanogens in the building "core" of refuse. As more refuse is added and sections (the term "cell" is used to describe an area of waste placement) are stacked out, new wells are added to capture the gas.
It takes some effort because you have to design both for the maximum design flow and for a time variable generation rate. You might start a project with one or two ICEs or turbine of smaller design rather than one large one and then add to the system as needed.
For comparison, burning municipal solid waste yields more energy while reducing the volume of waste (and at the national level some 2700 MW generating capacity is installed in the US). However, people don't like the idea of having incinerators and all that burning refuse nearby.
wondering what the typical composition of landfill gas is? you state that the (landfill gas) has a lower heat content than ng. ng (methane) has a heat content of 1031 btu/scf. what accounts for the difference? is it co2 ?
what we buy at the meter is not pure methane. i think i read that the btu content is about 850 btu/scf with the difference being nitrogen.
It is the CO2 that reduces the heat content (~60 methane, most of the rest is CO2).
Actually, suppliers do try to keep the BTU content up around 1000 BTU/scf. Nitrogen and CO2 can be present in small quantities, but too much ends up reducing the efficiency of any combustion process more than is necessary (the air has nitrogen along "for the ride" which has to be heated up as part of the combustion process. Extra nitrogen contained in natural gas is just a heat diluent and reduces efficiency). You see it in the "therm adjustment factor. We can accept that in a waste gas like LFG and it the combustion process is properly tuned for it.
I should mention the obvious: Were sewage to be mixed with organic wastes that had been separated out of the solid waste stream, and run through an anaerobic generator, an optimal amount of methane could be produced and captured as an energy source. The residue could then be used as a soil amendment/fertilizer for non-food crops (fiber & biofuels, mainly). Even with the anaerobic digester process, direct incorporation into food cropland is not recommended, though perhaps the treated land could be rotated into food production after a few seasons. Segregating industrial wastes from human sewage would be essential to minimize levels of heavy metals and other contaminents. In short, we really need to engineer our system of handling waste a lot differently than the way we presently operate.
WNC Observer
Could earthworms eat the anaerobic waste from a methane generator? If so, the worms could be sold for fish and chicken food, while the worm castings would be an extremely valuable fertiliser. This would be 3 seperate income streams from the waste and might add enough value to be worthwhile to a large organic waste producing company.
There is possibly a better alternative to collecting methane or incineration for electricity generation from MSW. Check this out:
http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/content.php?cat=tech
I just heard about this plasma gasification technique. This plant is supposedly coming online any day now.... will have to take a trip down to Ottawa to find out how it goes, this seems to be a great solution to the problem of MSW.