TASC: Power Generation from Recovered Methane (Meeting Notes)

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Sustainable Business & Living iForum : One Thread

TASC, is a Silicon Valley luncheon meeting group that includs guest speakers. One of the attendees usually sends around notes.

Diane

'''

Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 18:41:12 EDT Subject: TASC: Power Generation from Recovered Methane

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

Power Generation from Recovered Methane

Don Augenstein is technical director/VP of I E M, Inc., a nonprofit participating in environmental research on the climate effects of solid waste, renewable energy, and related issues.

Don will discuss a new approach for solid waste landfill management called "controlled landfilling", which is receiving increasing attention and encouragement from federal (EPA, etc.) and California regulatory agencies and also from the private and public waste management sector. Don will describe the encouraging performance of a 4 year project in Yolo County utilizing the controlled landfill approach to control and speed methane generation, increase methane recovery for energy and reduce fugitive emissions to the atmosphere.

PRESENTATION SYNOPSIS:

Don Augenstein began his talk by explaining that one of the large sources of methane in our atmosphere is landfills, from which millions of tones of the stuff are exhaled every year. The problem is that under normal landfill conditions, the stuff just bleeds into the atmosphere slowly, sometimes taking 50 years to finish the decomposing process on the carbon based contents like lawn clippings, paper, and food waste.

Don Augenstein has spent many years in the waste management industry. He showed us research results he had come up with in the 1970s that conclusively proved that by adding water to a landfill it was possible to speed up the decomposition process, so that the process could be completed in 10 years or so. In addition to adding water, he described methods of capturing the "swamp gas" that comes off (about half of it is methane), which can then be used to run engines and generate electricity.

Many of the problems he experienced getting a trial site going were regulatory in nature. The regulations that govern landfill design are a patchwork of competing ideas, many with poorly thought out relationships with each other. For example, it is illegal to put liquids in a landfill, so it was necessary to find a loophole that they could sneak water through. With the help of the California Waste Management Board they were able to do that.

The demonstration site in Yolo County has two landfill cells, each 100 ft by 100 ft by 40 ft deep. One cell has the water added process going, and the other is monitored and tapped for methane capture the same way, but not wet. He showed charts over two years for both, and clearly much more decomposition was going on in the wet cell. In addition, the internal temperature of that cell was higher, indicating that composting was happening. He showed pictures of the two cells, and the ground level of the water added one was clearly falling relative to the other, indicating that another advantage of this process was reduced landfill volume over time.

He concluded his talk by pointing out that capturing landfill emissions could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the human race by as much as 5 to 7 percent. When you consider that the burning of this gas could replace natural gas or other fossil fuels, even greater net savings per year could result. Augenstein feels that there is no other step we can as easily take that will help us as much to get our house in order on the Climate Change issue.



-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Answers

U.S. Department of Energy

Issued on May 7, 1999

Energy Department to Fund Further Studies of Six Concepts for Capturing, Disposing
of Greenhouse Gases

Concepts Emerged From Early DOE Competition to
Identify Possible Approaches to Reducing Global Warming Gases

http://www.fetc.doe.gov/publications/press/1999/tl_seq2.html

Six promising concepts that could offer advanced, low-cost approaches for reducing the buildup of greenhouse gases in the world's atmosphere have emerged from a year of exploratory studies and have been selected by the Department of Energy for further development.

The six propose different ways to capture or permanently dispose of greenhouse gases - part of a family of intriguing new technical concepts called "carbon sequestration." The Energy Department will provide more than $2.5 million to the selected projects to explore concepts that range from advanced membranes that would extract carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon-fueled systems to the disposal of carbon dioxide in the deep ocean or into underground saline formations.

Carbon sequestration research is attracting increasing interest largely because it may make it possible to remove large quantities of greenhouse gases from the exhausts of energy systems or from the atmosphere without requiring a major turnover of today's energy infrastructure. If the technology can be made affordable, reliable, and environmentally safe, both industrialized and developing countries could use it to manage their carbon emissions. ...

[snip]

Institute for Environmental Management Inc., Palo Alto, CA, working with the California Energy Commission and Yolo County, CA, to demonstrate a way to capture methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, from landfills; proposed award: $347,000

[snip]

Institute for Environmental Management, Inc. (IEM), Palo Alto, CA
Lead researcher: Donald Augenstein, 650/856-2850; proposed Phase II award: $347,000

Project: "Landfill Operation for Carbon Sequestration and Maximum Methane Emissions Control" - The objectives of this project are to determine cost and performance data of a landfill outside Davis, California, including gas generation and other indicators of the progress of biological activity and waste decomposition. The project involves two demonstration cells, each containing 9,000 tons of waste. Biological reactions are facilitated by optimized additions of liquid. Cells are covered with a gas impermeable membrane to contain methane; gas permeable layers conduct gas to a collection point. Gas-generation, waste-volume reduction and hydraulic monitoring behavior are planned until the methane-generation phase is complete.

[snip]



-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000


INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, INC.
PUBLIC ABSTRACT

http://www.fetc.doe.gov/publications/press/ 1998/nov_abst.html#Institute

At the Yolo County Central Landfill (YCCL) outside Davis, California new technology ("controlled landfilling") is being developed to manage solid waste landfills for rapid completion of total gas generation and maximum gas capture. Methane generation has been accelerated by improving conditions for biological processes in the landfill. Gas is recovered with efficiency approaching 100% through use of surface membrane cover. Controlled landfilling reduces emissions of landfill methane, a significant greenhouse gas, to negligible levels. Since fugitive landfill methane emissions, even with "conventional" gas controls, are major sources of greenhouse gases, controlled landfilling helps substantially in efforts to forestall climate change.

The Yolo County project involves operation of two demonstration cells, each containing a total of approximately 9,000 tons of waste. Biological reactions are facilitated by optimized additions of liquid, both water and leachate from preexisting cells at the landfill. Cells are covered with gas-impermeable membrane, to contain methane and prevent its emissions to the atmosphere. Gas-permeable layers serve to conduct gas to a collection point.

Objectives are to determine cost and performance data, including gas generation and various other indicators of the progress of biological activity and waste decomposition. The cells are highly instrumented. Gas generation, waste volume reduction and a range of other parameters including hydraulic behavior monitoring are planned for the next several years, until the methane generation phase is complete.

The Yolo County controlled landfill project has been conducted as a cooperative effort between Yolo County and the Institute for Environmental Management (IEM), Palo Alto. It has been cooperatively funded and cost shared by Yolo County, CA, Sacramento County, the California Energy Commission and IEM. Further support for monitoring has come through the Western Regional Biomass Energy Program (WRBEP) administered by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Ramin Yazdani, Yolo County, manages field operations with assistance of Rick Moore and Karina Dahl. Don Augenstein, IEM, who helped initiate the project, performs support work.

The development of controlled landfilling is expected to offer an important advance in landfill operation, enabling low-cost mitigation of methane emissions, maximization of beneficial energy capture from landfills, reducing ultimate landfill volume, and reducing longer-term waste management costs.



-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000


Yolo County Central Landfill

Toward a Twenty-first Century Landfill

Accelerating Landfill Gas Generation
for Energy Production

http://www.yolocounty.org/org/PPW/diwm/bioreactor.htm#gas



-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000


Moderation questions? read the FAQ