In the San Francisco Bay Area, hundreds of garbage trucks are running on LNG: liquefied natural gas, made right at the dump. It turns out that next to all that trash sits the world’s largest biofuel plant and it is recycling landfill gas into something beneficial.

“We are closing the loop,” says Linde LLC Business Development Chief Steven Eckhardt. “We’re taking methane and turning into a clean, renewable fuel for the trucks that bring that trash right back to the landfill. We think that’s a key story here. We’re tapping an unused resource.”

Harvesting that methane also keeps thousands of tons of greenhouse gas from being released into the atmosphere. Waste Management Landfill Operations Director Ken Lewis showed us how wells placed around the dump work like a vacuum deep underground, where organic material is rotting away, producing methane in the process.

“We have over 200 gas wells at the Altamont Landfill. We drill into the waste mass, place a well down deep in there, and extract from that well the landfill gas which we then convey over to the LNG plant.” Right next door, the methane is transformed into LNG, which is cheaper and cleaner than diesel.

Trash truck collectors give it a thumb’s up. “The natural gas that we run has basically the same horsepower. It’s clean burning. Our drivers love it, it’s good for the environment, I mean, it’s great,” says Waste Management Foreman Mike Keele.

The Altamont facility isn’t the only methane conversion plant of its kind, but it’s the biggest. Every day, it produces 10,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas — enough to fuel 300 trash trucks. Each year, it’s projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tons a year. Since opening in the fall of 2009, it’s produced 2 million gallons of LNG and has won several significant environmental awards.

Perhaps the only drawback is the cost. The initial investment to build the Altamont facility was $15 million. The conversion process is also pricey. “It is expensive because we have to put it through a multistep purification system to remove all the impurities in the landfill gas,” explains Linde’s Eckhardt. “But we expect this plant to be profitable once we’re able to participate in carbon and renewable trading markets, which we expect will happen in the next several months.” http://landfill-site.com http://landfill-gas.com

Supporters say as the technology improves, costs will come down, and more trash heaps will be recycled into fuel depots, with trucks filling up on LNG as they leave the dump to go out and collect more trash.

“We’re turning a dirty landfill from a disposal facility  into a clean energy production facility,” says Lewis.

A second facility in Southern California is in the planning stages, and other large landfills are looking at how they can “close the loop” by turning garbage into gas.

View the original article here

The United Kingdom produces 434 million tons of waste each year. That will fill the Albert Hall each 2 hours.

Householders produce about 30,000,000 tonnes about annually. 73% of this waste goes to landfill, although ninety percent of it actually is recoverable and may be recycled, reused or composted. Landfill remains the principal way of handling most of the waste in the United Kingdom. Landfill tax was introduced in 1996 in an effort to cut the amount of waste going to landfill.

Landfill Gas ( Methane ) One tonne of waste tipped in a landfill produces between two hundred and four hundred cubic metres of landfill gas. Landfill sites released 32% of the UK’s methane emissions in 2009. Methane is about twenty-one times more strong than carbon-dioxide and permitting methane to flee into the atmosphere has heavy planetary warming consequences.

Landfill Leachate During landfill site operation, a liquid known as ‘Leachate ‘ is produced. This is a mix of organic degradation products, liquid waste and rain water. Leachate is intensely variable in composition dependent on the character of the waste in the landfill and the landfill design, but generally it has high organic carbon content, significant amounts of nitrogen and is mostly a little acidic.

Landfills are designed and operate to seal the waste as much as practicable from the encompassing environment. Central to this environmental protection is avoiding groundwater contamination.

Recycle

The more rubbish, waste and junk that gets recycled is the less that has to go to landfill. This in turn means less methane is released, causing less global warming, and less leachate seeping into the earth and damaging our already fragile eco system.

My name is Martin Harris. I am the founder of an eco friendly company called called Eco Rubbish Clearance – http://ecorubbishclearance.co.uk The company was started with an aim to providing a green alternative to conventional skip hire.

Recycling has never been so important. We need to cut back on landfill deposits and find new ways to reuse and recycle unwanted things. Visit our website to find out what the future of waste management looks like. http://ecorubbishclearance.co.uk From small acorns, mighty oaks grow…

The term “final storage quality” was first defined twenty years ago by Baccini and Henseler and other members of a Swiss working group on landfills. In the meantime, the definition has been modified by several authors in various published papers.

In essence, final storage quality is used to imply an “environmentally sound flux/load for short, medium and long term periods”, to use one of the academic versions that I rather like for its brevity.

Which criteria should be used to determine when the “Final Storage Quality” has been reached, is being debated.

What will be the final contaminating parameter of the large number of potential pollutants in a landfill at the end of that that long awaited transition from active aftercare management to passive aftercare?

Which contaminant will be the most critical in the long term, which when it is dissipated, we can all stop concerning ourselves that what was once a landfill no longer has a potential to harm the environment which surrounds it?

Well, having I hope now wetted your curiosity, I am going to disappoint you by saying that I don’t think that academia really yet knows for certain the answer to that. Given the huge number of sanitary (lined and capped landfills) now being filled around the world as I write this, I think we should all think hard and get a little worried for our offspring.

However, two aspects of long term landfill which are of direct economic importance and about which more can be said, are:

1. The longevity of economic landfill gas production for energy production,
2. And, (for those tasked with landfill aftercare duties) it is from the point of economic aftercare, how the escape of the remaining methane to atmosphere without first oxidising it, can be achieved.

It is important to achieve “final storage quality” while consistently burning/flaring the methane in landfill gas, or in another way oxidising the methane to prevent serious climate change implications.

We can be sure that in the long-term, gas produced by landfills will be characterized by low methane content.

The methane content and rate of gas production will be so low that there will be scarcely any possibility for its use in economically-sound energy recovery procedures and yet it will still amount to a significant discharge due to the very long period of its slow discharge.

There is no escaping that the gas produced in the long tail of the “elk” requires treatment due to its global warming potential.

New low-cost technologies must be found, either to extend the phase of profitable landfill gas utilization, or methods developed to, if possible, reduce the landfill gas aftercare phase and mitigate long-term emissions.

At our sister landfill gas web site we have started to look at possible aftercare strategies with respect to dwindling landfill gas, and we have written about:

• The proportion of total Active Landfill Gas Recovery that can be economically utilised by active landfill gas extraction
• The developing concept of bio-oxidation of landfill gas instead of flaring, either in specially designed vessels or within modified landfill caps during landfill aftercare.

Click on the linked text in the above lines to read more.

The United Kingdom (UK) has traditionally used landfill disposal as the main method of waste management. However, it has long been recognised that landfilling is unsustainable due to its long term harmful effects on the environment and public health.

Landfill also places a high long term risk on groundwater quality, which could threaten the availability of clean water for future generations.

Under the European Union (EU) Landfill Directive, and starting in 2006, member nations were required to divert biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) from landfills. The UK has also committed to the EU Renewable Energy Directive, which binds it to sourcing at least 15% of its energy mix from renewables by 2020.

Through the last decade the emphasis was on recycling, and this is still the case, but recycling will only achieve waste diversion up to a point. Therefore, to meet these targets, the UK is developing alternative waste management options as well as planning to achieve considerable deployment of renewables.

Throughout 2009 a number of aspects of UK waste management policy that have been in place for some time came together so that for the first time a genuine shift in the industry could be detected. Investors began to see the wisdom of those that have already anticipated this new vision and have committed to investment in the waste technologies, as many of the smaller more nimbly operators have begun to make profits. Where profit is to be made others will now follow to secure waste contracts for the resource that collected material provides them.

If asked what the single biggest influence on this was during 2009, I would say it as the government’s Landfill Tax escalator policy which meant that for most waste disposers, for the first time, landfill disposal actually became more expensive than recycling. You can argue around the detail here, but I had not before the summer of 2009 witnessed recycling companies able to say they could offer price competitive disposal prices when head to head with the traditional landfill operators.

Another major driving force in UK waste management which is powering the evolution from a disposal problem to a resource optimisation opportunity are the high targets for waste diversion from landfill, and 20 year or longer integrated waste management contracts. These are public/private partnership projects which the UK government is pushing ahead with now in order to achieve those targets.

Here to, we saw a major milestone achieved while the recession was biting the hardest early in 2009. This was the successful planning application, and award of contract, for the £4 billion Greater Manchester Waste PFI Contract, the largest of its kind in Europe, and all built upon stakeholder involvement. However, the Greater Manchester PFI Contract is only the most high profile example of a procurement revolution which probably reached its peak of activity during 2009, and saw similar contracts either largely in place or planned throughout the nation.

The year also saw a number of these projects hit the headlines, and some Energy from Waste schemes being pushed back at planning (Cornwall and Edinburgh for example).

However, the trend continued and accelerated so that for all waste streams and/or locations where re-use or recycling of waste is not viable, energy recovery is being reinforced as the preferred option, with disposal used only as a last resort.

For a long while the major Energy from Waste producer has been from landfills, and it has been landfill gas (LFG) utilisation. However, the relative importance to LFG utilisation as a proportion of total energy from waste production will now be expected to decline.

Each month in the years to come we will see the rollout of new energy from waste (EfW) projects coming on-stream. However, while the adoption of new waste technologies is being supported in the UK by government departments, the perceived high risk for the PFI partnerships, has remained high. 2009 was not good for implementing the more innovative of these.

The increased cautiousness of the banks funding the private element of these projects has come at a very unfortunate time, as it has in my view severely detracted against the bankability of schemes using these new technologies. In fact, 2009 saw the shelving of quite a number of the more adventurous new waste technology options in favour of more traditional incineration technology.

During the year events also reinforced the wisdom of encouraging the use of EfW and other home grown renewable energy source, within the global scene. Most will remember that early in 2009 we saw the deep rationing of natural gas supplies to some European nations which were themselves unconnected with a producer country dispute. This held up supplies during the coldest weather and in a completely arbitrary fashion.

Most now strongly support the benefits of renewable energy for its improved energy supply security, ability to provide climate change mitigation when combined with stiff recycling targets and the highest possible waste diversion, and not least its resource efficiency.

However, good though that may be for waste as an opportunity, the main event of the year was the new found security to the recyclers which came with the attainment of the economic tipping point, whereby landfilling has become more expensive than most forms of main stream recycling activity. From now on the markets in recyclates will operate on a progressively more stable and normal economic basis.

Recycling has always made sense for the environment, but from now on it will also become a natural economically favourable option as well We can also look forward to the future knowing that the landfill tax will rise again in April 2010, taking us further into the new UK era of waste as a resource of opportunity.

With over 500 subscribers to this blog we reasoned that some of you my have experience of landfill fires which you may be able and willing to send us.

The research is non-profit making, and your information on landfill fires just might make a difference someday, especially if it put you in danger and the message you send us about it may help others not to make the same mistake!

He’s doing an MSc (Sustainable Waste Management) at the School of Civil Engineering and the Environment at Southampton University.

This is the enquiry he has made:

“My dissertation is on the subject of the “Detection and Treatment of Landfill Fires”

The aim of my paper is to review current ‘good practice’ for avoiding and extinguishing landfill fires by talking to experts around the world and gathering together the best information as a guide for European landfill operators, local authorities and Fire and Rescue Services in the UK. I want to provide a balanced view of ‘what works’ and ‘ what doesn’t work’ for MSW, C&D. Industrial and tyre wastes. The Fire College have said that they would be interested in parts of the dissertation if these can be translated into Guidance Notes.

This is my Wish List of research information:

* Documented / anecdotal reports of landfill fires:
* How were they started – deliberate (in the Third World), arson, spontaneous combustion, lightning, etc
* How were they treated – successes and failures.
* Fugitive emissions information – water and air.
* Geotechnical information – formation of ‘sink holes’, collapse, effect on containment system
* Any academic papers on the subject
* Introduction to anyone who has suffered a fire.

Any help will be most gratefully received and fully acknowledged and I will be very happy to let you have a copy of my dissertation, once it is accepted.”

Can you help? Use the comments form below or email any private communications to info@wastersblog.com

SARDINIA SYMPOSIUM NEWSLETTER –
11 ^th AUGUST 2009

The Twelfth edition of the Sardinia Symposium, SARDINIA 2009 will include two general sessions and six specialized and workshop sessions for a total of eight parallel tracks.

During the meeting several interesting case studies and major controversial subjects will be discussed, representing an excellent opportunity for exchange of knowledge and experiences.

The final programme is available in the web site www.sardiniasymposium.it

Visit the web site www.sardiniasymposium.it for full details on how best to enjoy the Sardinia Symposium and register. Don’t forget to contact the IWWG secretariat to register in the IWWG training courses.

The Waster recommends the Sardinia Symposium as the top global waste management event. Sadly, the Waster himself, who did have the abstract of his paper this year approved for presentation, will not be able to attend this time, due to lack of funds due to recessionary belt tightening measures, otherwise he would be there like a shot! (by the way! – If anyone has a spare ticket, I can use, because they are unable to attend at the last minute for any reason please do email me!)

Reported problems with early compactors were a tendency for the wheels to pick up refuse, particularly in wet weather, and instability due to a high centre of gravity.

The steel wheels are fitted with spikes, lugs or bars for compression and traction purposes and the configuration of the track and wheel spikes is very important. The reported fault depends to some extent on these features but it has been found that tipping in more shallow layers often overcomes this difficulty.

Modern landfill compactors would be expected to have a life expectancy and maintenance profile not far removed from other landfill plant, just don’t expect performance equivalent to civil engineering earthworks uses.

Scrapers, both towed and independently powered, are seldom seen on landfills after initial development of the bases of landfills. They are used to strip, store and replace top and subsoil, and various forms of civil engineering earthworks equipment will clearly be used for such work including mechanical diggers and trenching equipment are used on site works.

Certain features are essential when buying either vehicle;

(i) they should have cabs with roll-bars for the protection and comfort of the operator;

(ii) if a bulldozer is purchased, the blade should be designed for handling refuse — it should be higher and wider, and should stand off from the vehicle further than is normal;

(iii) a wheeled vehicle should be equipped with four-wheeled drive;

(iv) the fan should blow out from the engine instead of drawing air in, in order to reduce the risk of choking the radiator with refuse;

(v) the wheels or drums of a compactor should be self cleaning and suitable to deal with the material being imported.

The choice of landfill mobile plant depends on a number of factors; quantities and types of wastes; the activities required of the machinery; whether the material delivered to the site has been previously treated; location and nature of any materials on site which might be used for side or top cover. However, wheeled vehicles will always be popular.

Cost Considerations

When purchasing a vehicle for controlled tip work, running costs must inevitably be considered along with the standard of work which the vehicle is capable of achieving. In the case of a tracked vehicle, track maintenance costs can be high as there is a great deal of wear due to the abrasive nature of the material in which the tracks are running, but costs can be reduced by changing the vehicle before major repairs are necessary and when the exchange value is favourable.

The disadvantage of punctures has to some extent been overcome as far as wheeled vehicles are concerned, and is completely eradicated for steel-cutting wheel equipped compactors, but taking into consideration their quality of work, whilst they may be faster they are not capable of the high standards of levelling of the tracked vehicle.

Monday November 17 2008

Ireland country is heading for a major landfill crisis.

Within the next two years, almost a third of Ireland’s 35 landfills will be overflowing with rubbish.

According to figures from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 11 of the 35 landfill sites around the country are likely to be full by 2011.

Another four will be under severe pressure by 2014, creating a massive headache for the relevant local authorities.

Since 2006, Waterford County Council has been forced to take rubbish from its landfill site to another facility in Co Carlow.

By the end of next year, Mayo County Council will have to consider a similar plan when its Derinumera landfill is expected to run out of capacity.

Two of Dublin’s major dumps are also expected to reach capacity by 2010.

Among the sites facing closure are Arthurstown landfill in south county Dublin, Ballealy landfill in Fingal, Dunmore landfill in Kilkenny and Donohill landfill in south Tipperary.

Pressure

Overall, the EPA estimates that three million tonnes of waste is being thrown into landfills every year. This means that within a decade all the country’s existing dumps are likely to have reached capacity.

Only around 25 million tonnes of total landfill capacity remain nationwide.

When planned super dumps at Drehed in Kildare and Bottlehill in Cork begin operation, they are likely to begin filling fast.

Plus, the EPA expects Irish people to be generating growing amounts of waste.

Despite the new focus on recycling, the EPA projects that the amount of waste generated by each person will rise from 0.84 tonnes in 2006 to 1.15 tonnes person by 2020.

The environmental body has described the increase as “phenomenal”.

Another factor in the waste management crisis is the EU landfill directive, which will come into effect in 2010.

Under its terms, the Government will have to reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste that is disposed of in landfill.

Upward

Ireland is directed to reduce its disposal rates by 50pc. But it is also expected that biodegradable municipal waste, like waste from households and commercial activities, will rise by 4pc per year for the next decade, doubling by 2025 with the EPA.

In 2005, a total of 3.05 million tonnes of municipal waste was generated in Ireland, an increase of 65pc since 1995, and the EPA says that while the rate of increase is slowing, the direction is still upward.

The European Environment Agency has reported that Ireland ranks as the largest per capita generator of municipal waste in the EU. More …

Tyre bales at Pevensey

It will be obvious to our Wastersblog readers that the disposal of vehicle tyres is a real headache, for the waste management industry, and as motorists we are all feeling the pinch from rapidly rising tyre disposal costs.

Certainly, the last time I bought a new tyre, the garage added several pounds to my bill for disposing of the old one.

However, a number of landfill operators have been using tyres for leachate drainage within landfills for some years as an engineering material, and they have found that using tyres as drainage layers in landfills provides adequate flow capabilities, at close to zero cost for their leachate drainage. However, manhandling individual tyres to stack them efficiently on site is a tedious, dirty, and time consuming task, and this fact alone has probably done a great deal to limit tyre use uptake. Whole and granulated tyres have been used for this purpose.

That was for whole tyres, as far as we are aware, just about the only use available in landfills.

Since WRAP published a British Standards Institution (BSI) and has produced a Publicly Available Specification, PAS 108, in collaboration with the tyres reprocessing industry, a whole new range of uses has opened up, from baled tyres.

Almost overnight, baled tyres have become an engineering product with standard bale sizes and shapes, and most important of all, clear design strength data.

Designers and purchasers can now use the structural and drainage characteristics provided from the research done for the PAS, and incorporate tyre bales into designs, just like any other proprietary geo-synthetic material.

In short, providing a specification for producing compact tyre bales of a consistent and verifiable quality and dimension, opens up a new and potentially huge market for waste tyres.

The method re-uses tyres, reducing the demand for the primary aggregate materials used in the past.

The PAS 108 specification can be adopted by suppliers for producing tyre bales such that potential customers will be assured that they are procuring a construction material of consistent and verifiable quality.

Furthermore, the core of this document addresses the production, handling, storage, transport and placement of standardized tyre bales, the dimensions and properties of which are standardised and described in this PAS. So go find out more at the Landfill Site Tyre Bales page here, and you will also find the contact details for one of the first suppliers.

By Angela Gregory, New Zealand Herald

New Zealand could learn lessons from Denmark, a country with a similar-sized population that has cut its landfills by more than 1000 in the past 30 years, says a visiting waste management expert.

Peter Heydorn, a Danish environmental engineer, said 70 per cent of Denmark’s waste was recycled.

Only 6 per cent of the country’s waste went to landfill and a quarter of all waste was incinerated to create energy, which was less polluting than the burning of oil or coal.

Mr Heydorn told the Herald there were lessons in the Danish Waste Model for New Zealand which had the right mindset but could, for instance, do with more recycling facilities.

In Denmark, a country of 5.4 million, there were 340 recycling sites where the public could take all kinds of waste, including hazardous, and be assisted with how to divide it up among the appropriate bins.

“It has been a huge success.”

Only non-recyclable waste was allowed to be sent to landfill and there were a range of fines where breaches of policy were discovered.

The Danish model had 21 landfills now compared to 1140 in 1970.

Mr Heydorn said Denmark was way ahead of other European countries in keeping waste sent to landfills to a minimum. Taxes from landfills went towards inventing new models and technologies for recycling.

Denmark had also achieved 99 per cent recycling of green waste from parks and gardens and all households were offered a free compostor.

Mr Heydorn said it was critical to uncouple waste growth from economic growth.

There needed to be goal setting and planning at the national level and waste management and implementation at the local levels.

In Denmark there was often collective treatment of waste between municipalities, he said.

The Ministry for the Environment in New Zealand reports there are 62 identified landfills in the country.

Original page New Zealan Herald.