Now That's Recycling! (9)

One man's garbage becomes another's power plant
By DAVID PORTER, Associated Press Writer – 26 mins ago AP –

. – Standing atop the 400-acre 1-E landfill, you get a panoramic view of the Meadowlands sports complex to the north and the New York City skyline to the east. You're also standing on a critical part of New Jersey's, and the nation's, energy future.

Decades' worth of household trash, construction waste and assorted refuse buried in the landfill are providing electricity to thousands of homes.

"It's like you're buying back your own garbage, but in a different form," said Tom Marturano, director of solid waste and natural resources for the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, which owns and operates the 1-E site.

The Kearny site is among 21 landfills in New Jersey where methane gas produced by decomposing garbage is used as fuel to generate electricity, according to the state Board of Public Utilities.

That is almost as many as in the state of Texas and more than the combined number in Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Nationwide, the federal Environmental Protection Agency counts 455 landfills that use their methane to generate electricity and has targeted more than 500 others as potential candidates through its Landfill Methane Outreach Program.

One of New Jersey's leading environmentalists envisions the state's landfills someday making more use of the sites by installing wind and solar power to supplement methane.

"We see landfills as potential New Age energy plants because you can combine all three and create a steady source of power — and not everybody wants a windmill in their backyard," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.

Marturano cautioned that adding wind farms might take awhile because landfill surfaces are constantly shifting, but the Meadowlands Commission already has plans to install 20 acres of solar panels on the southern side of the 1-E landfill.

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great! - thanks Conrad

I should think,mainly Steam,CO2,Sulphur-Dioxide,depending on the Sulphur-Content of the Gas.

You find a good Breakdown of the Components of Bio-Gas here:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

Interesting Article.Has INFO on Landfill-Gas too.

We have been using Biogas for a long time here in CH.
Getting plenty from the Mud leftover in the Water-treatment Plants.
It's used for Heating and some Current-Generating in those Plants.

It's been done here in Alberta for decades now, as well as burning garbage along with waste from the pulp and paper industry in Whitecourt, Alberta in a Finnish engineered plant to produce electricity. It's not 100% clean, but with scrubbers and high heat it's far better than the coal fired power plants we have operating all across the province.
Edmonton, Alberta built a giant facility to recycle the cities garbage over a decade ago, and everything is seperated and sorted, reused, sold as raw material or scrap or turned into compost. There are a number of items there is no real market for as of yet, but it's being stockpiled rather than landfilled, so when technology/prices catches up, it can be reused somehow.
It's so efficient compared to the old way that they're actually mining the old dump for material once the methane production goes down to low levels.