Landfill Gas to Power Wewoka Brick Company's Kilns - NewsOK.com

WEWOKA — Most businesses probably wouldn't want to have a landfill next door, but it is working out well for Commercial Brick Corp.

The Wewoka Biogas Project was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from WCA Waste Corp.'s Sooner Landfill in Wewoka, while providing cheaper fuel to the nearby Commercial Brick Corp. plant. The annual reduction of greenhouse gases attributable to the project are about the same as:

Greenhouse gas emissions from nearly 6,800 passenger vehicles

• Carbon dioxide emissions from consuming more than 82,000 barrels of oil

• Carbon sequestered annually by nearly 7,600 acres of pine or fir forests

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's

landfill methane outreach program

The family-owned brickmaker is getting biogas from the WCA Waste Corp. landfill about a quarter mile north of its plant.

The Wewoka Biogas Project, which is providing methane to one of Commercial's four kilns, was dedicated Friday by a host of officials from the companies involved in making it happen.

William Brinker, operations manager of project developer Enerdyne Power Systems Inc., said the project grew out of a WCA initiative to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. That meshed with Commercial's quest to find a way to reduce its energy costs.

“It just makes economic sense because we're displacing other fossil fuels,” Brinker said.

Companies like eBay, Designtex and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters helped finance the project by buying carbon offsets.

Brinker said decomposing trash in the Sooner Landfill creates methane, the main component in natural gas.

It is collected by 14 vertical wells drilled into the landfill.

The gas is processed at an adjacent blower station to remove excess water and then sent over to the brick plant.

Commercial President Bob Hartsock said the company always is looking for ways to save money on fuel.

“This just made perfect sense,” he said.

Hartsock's company makes about 156 million bricks a year, running its natural gas-fired kilns nonstop, 24 hours a day.

Hartsock said companies often try to build brick plants near landfills to take advantage of available biogas, but Commercial had the luxury of having a landfill built about a quarter mile from its plant.

“All we had to do was retrofit our burners to accept the methane gas,” he said.

Hartsock said it is too soon to know how much the biogas project will save in fuel costs, but the arrangement will allow Commercial to remain competitive in a tough environment.

The deal means gas from the landfill always will be cheaper than natural gas.

“That's where it's really a home run for you,” he said.

Hartsock said he is looking forward to drawing more methane from the landfill over time.

“The more waste they get out there the more it will generate,” Hartsock said.

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Research: From landfill biogas to transport fuel - Recycling News

Helsinki -- Within the Academy of Finland?s research programme Sustainable Energy, researchers looked at the use of biogas as a transport fuel. As a joint Finnish-Chilean effort, the researchers studied the upgrading of landfill gas into fuel. ?In recent years, interest in using biogas technology in the utilisation of industrial by-products for energy purposes has increased considerably. Some countries have already introduced this technology on a large scale, says Professor Jukka Rintala, the principal investigator of the project.

Our video for this post is on the subject of Finnish Biogas. There is no association between the video and the article.

Biogas can be produced from many different materials ranging from biodegradable waste to energy crops. The biogas produced in this process is a versatile source of energy. It can be used for heat and electricity, be processed into vehicle fuel or fed into the natural gas grid. In addition, the residual material, the so-called digestate, from the process can be used as fertilizer or soil conditioner,? Rintala explains.
Methane derived from biogas has been shown to be one of the most suitable candidates for use as biofuel, thanks to its sustainable production chain. Methane also meets the EU?s criteria for sustainable biofuels, which will take effect in a few years? time. Rintala: ?Biogas can be used as a biofuel once its methane content is raised above 95 per cent. In our research, we used water absorption, which yielded a methane content of 80?90 per cent. The rest is carbon dioxide and nitrogen.?

Nitrogen does not cause any damage to car engines, but it does lower the energy content of biogas. To reach a higher methane content through this process, we should prevent the access of nitrogen in the gas collection system in the landfill. Carbon dioxide does not damage engines either, but it lowers the energy value of biogas, says Rintala.

Rintala would like to see more research on the effects of process parameters on the costs of biogas upgrading and the effects of pressurisation on compound removal. As a rule, the only criterion for biomass is that it can be broken down by microbes under oxygen-free conditions. Of course, the composition of feedstocks does affect the composition of the biogas produced and also the chosen method of purification. Landfill gases are generally thought of as being the most difficult ones to upgrade into fuel.? Quelle: Academy of Finland
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Anaerobic Digestion Plant Opens at Langage Farm, Devon, UK

Posted on July 2, 2011 by David

Devon dairy launches anaerobic digestion facility to fuel clotted cream production

Lord Henley and Gary Jones from Langage Farm

A Devonshire dairy has officially opened a £3.4m anaerobic digestion (AD) facility that will turn food waste from around the county into the energy that will help produce its clotted cream, ice cream crème fraiche and yoghurt.

The facility at Langage Farm, Plymouth, received £1.2m of funding from the Anaerobic Digestion Demonstration Programme and was opened by Lord Henley, Minister for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on Friday 1 July.

By the end of its first year of operation, the AD facility will process 12,000 tonnes of food waste collected from households across the county by local authorities. The facility will also process on-farm dairy wastes, converting these fuels into renewable heat and electricity.

The renewable energy will not only power the dairy products production, but also export surplus energy to the National Grid. In its first five years, the Langage AD facility expects to produce 20,000 MW of energy saving the equivalent of 2,000  tonnes of CO2 per annum on energy bills.

Lord Henley, Gary Jones, Gary Streeter MP, Marcus Gover and James Harvey

Lord Henley said: “The facility at Langage Farm is an excellent working example of how a localised closed loop economy can be created. Food waste that otherwise would have gone to landfill will instead be used to produce the energy that will power much of the production process here on the farm, helping to produce award winning clotted cream, ice cream and yoghurt.”

Marcus Gover, Director of Organics and Energy from Waste at WRAP, believes the market, including investors, developers and end users, should be confident of AD as a reliable, safe and profitable resource efficiency process.

“AD is a growing part of the resource efficiency solution, capable of diverting biodegradable waste from landfill, creating renewable energy, stimulating the green economy and improving the sustainability of commercial agriculture. We really see it as a huge opportunity for the UK.”

A spokesperson for Langage Farm said: “We are proud to be a part of the solution to local waste problems and hope to see an increase in the uptake of this technology in the future, it really makes sense to use waste as a resource in this way.”

Biogas Plant In California Fueled By Landfill - EarthTechling

by Susan DeFreitas, February 9th, 2011

We’ve been hearing more and more in recently about biogas, and the trend continues in California, where Republic Services and Ameresco have announced plans for a 4.3 megawatt (MW) capacity landfill gas-to-electricity plant at the Vasco Road Landfill in Livermore.

Video shows an Amersco Methane Plant on another landfill.

Ameresco–which plans to capture the landfill gas generated at the plant and use it as fuel to generate power for homes and businesses in the Santa Clara and San Francisco Bay Area–has entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement with Silicon Valley Power, the City of Santa Clara’s electric utility, for the power from the project. This will help Silicon Valley Power meet its renewable energy obligations under California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, which mandates that utilities serve 33 percent of their total load with renewable energy by 2020.

Republic Services is no stranger to landfill gas plants in California, having completed six of them already with a total generating capacity of 41 MW. Brian Bales, executive vice president business development for Republic, noted, in a statement, that in addition to converting gas from a landfill into renewable-based electricity, the project’s construction and operation will add new green jobs and economic benefits to the local economy.

The Vasco Road Landfill gas plant is scheduled to commence operations in late 2012.

Related Stories Tags Ameresco, biogas, california, Republic Services

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