Methane gas at landfills produces electricity
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There's a great big equation emerging in our economic life, and it is producing changes that can help to lighten our collective greenhouse gas footprint without most of us even noticing. In simplified form, it might be rendered thus:
t1 + t2 = e
Translation: trash plus time equals energy.
Again, that's the simplified version. In reality, turning trash into energy takes more than time; it takes money and manpower and equipment.
To date, more than 500 landfills across the country have participated in a program by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that helps landfill owners and operators to recover methane from landfills for use as an energy source.
Three landfills in Allegheny County participate in the agency's Landfill Methane Outreach Program -- Imperial, Monroeville and South Hills, located in Library.
Methane is the colorless, odorless hydrocarbon that is the primary element of natural gas. It is produced throughout nature through the decomposition of organic materials, including flatulence from the digestive tracts of animals. And while carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that receives the most attention, methane absorbs 20 times the heat that carbon does, making it proportionately more dangerous to the atmosphere.
The stuff that we throw away contains so much organic waste that as it decomposes, landfills become the second-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States. In 2007, landfills accounted for 23 percent of such emissions.
About two-thirds of the landfill projects under the EPA program use landfill gas, or LFG, to generate electricity. The local landfills are among the smaller number that use LFG to produce pipeline-quality natural gas.
All three landfills are decades-old -- Imperial began operations in 1950, Monroeville in 1961 and South Hills in 1960 -- but have only had their landfill gas captured and processed in recent years.
The Imperial landfill, owned and operated by Republic Services, receives about 13 million tons of waste annually. The landfill gas processing plant, owned and operated by Beacon Generating LLC, has been operating since September 2007. Processing plants for capturing methane and making it usable are typically built and operated by companies other than landfill owners.
First Published April 22, 2010 12:00 am
