Landfill Gas (LFG)

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Mo Heat

Mo Heat

Mod Emeritus
Nov 18, 2005
848
St. Louis, Missouri
Missouri is not know for a progressive renewable energy program, but there are a few high spots. Of course, we are required to comply with EPA landfill regs. ;)

http://tinyurl.com/gs3xn

This is a school near me whose students took some pretty big initiative and made something pretty cool happen. They burn landfill gas (mostly methane) to heat their boilers and save money.

Methane is around 23 times more destructive than CO2 to the atmosphere, and is thought to be responsible for around 20% of the man-made contribution to global warming.

The school's system isn't perfect. After a really big rain the methane may be 'dirty' for a couple days until things settle out again. During that time, they must use natural gas (their original fuel), so they are a duel fuel school. :)
 
Thats actually realy cool. I remember one of my first customers was this farmer from out east. He was looking at a Jotul series 3 vent free lp. He asked me (the greenhorn) if it could be converted to use methane, i kinda snickered. Maybe he wasnt crazy.
 
Actuallly one of our large area landfills is using this
principle to extract methane for use in driving two
large electrical generators, which in turn is fed back
to the "grid". Up to a couple of Megawatts potential.

Rob
 
Now we just need to figure out how to tap into all that methane as people leave Mexican restaurants.
 
that is a great idea. a farm would definitely benefit with the cows and chickens. does the school store the methane when not running the boilers? and if so how do they?
 
fbelec said:
... does the school store the methane when not running the boilers? and if so how do they?
Click to expand...

I believe the landfill was flaring all the methane prior to building a pipeline to the school next door. I suspect that any methane not used by the school is still flared. I don't recall anyone ever specifically addressing this on the video I saw hosted by the principal, but since the landfill donates the methane to the school, and also installed (donated) the pipeline to get to the property line, I doubt they bother storing it.
 
company called Ingenco makes these small electric generation plants. I live a couple miles from one here in Chesterfield. 14 megawatt electric production from landfill methane. Coming soon to a dump near you!!
 
My grandpa has direct connect to a gas liquid seperator on his farm. It burns well in in a propane funace. Not realy renewable but it is for him cause he never has a gas BIll! The gas well it is hooked up to is going to give off enuf gas to heat that house for years to come

It's "young" natural gas lots of methane in it.
 
If you think emissions from burning coal is scary...Do some research on what is actually in landfill gas. But then again, better to burn it than just let it vent.
...I can't wait til' Mike Rowe (dirty jobs on the history channel) get's ahold of this one..."Landfill well driller". Nasty stuff once you get to the bottom...but then again someone might one day figure out how to turn that black goo at the bottom of a landfill into oil.
 
Living 1 mile from big landfill here in PA, our school has a generator plant on the landfill property where they generate and put back into the grid. Good publicity for the landfill and in my humble opinion a great use for the LFG.
 
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