Florida to Make Gas from Trash

I hope the energy that will be used in "gasification" will be less than that of the energy that will be generated =)

u bet chipper

We need a system like this in Ottawa. The landfill is right on the highway and you can smell it. The pile is very large (several hundred feet tall). The garbage companies commercials are all about being green so they should actually do something and I think this is the best technology to do it.

After millions of dollars investment in PR these companies are rephrasing their technologies to include more public friendly names like Plasma Arch, Gasification, Pyrolysis etc. They are continuously justifying their technologies as green and producing gas for energy etc. This is all absurd and i am shocked that POPSCI does not include a disclaimer about the issues that are involved.

All of these thermal treatment processes are essentially incineration process. So the beginning stage is special but all the stages that follow are identical to combustion. the only difference is that they are igniting the gases from breaking down the waste rather than the waste itself directly.

For those of you who are really interested in this please follow the link to see a speech by Paul Connett (SpeedyB - Ottawa def. does not need this process!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB5iOtxlpCs
This is part 1 of three scenes and really gives you a detailed insight to the spin we are all being fed.

Be Green - TrueGreen

There is a covered landfil about three miles from my desk here that continuously flared off methane for years, like a friendly candle in the night. Now that methane is gathered by a tree of pipes and shunted into a building where it is burned to attain a tiny little bit of electricity. Even though the carbon dioxide from combustion is released directly into the atmosphere, this is still a net gain in the greenhouse account because methane is 20X the potent greenhouse gas than is C02.

All you have to do is be patient and let the trash compost itself. The landfill was sealed with a layer of clay and grass was planted over that.

Interestingly, George W. Bush leaves the globe fully one-third of a degree C. COOLER than when he took office. This is because carbon dioxide simply is not the 800-lb gorilla in the room when it comes to climate variability. Sun spots (or the lack thereof) look real good for that crown.

This is green tech, just not a perfectly closed, non-polluting, eternally stable kind of green tech. Purist will reject it, but the pragmatist love it. Here is how it is green:

1) Landfill space. Yes, landfills often become pretty parks that are all-so-green, but only after years of stripping and erosion control. This process eliminates landfill space and much of the heavy equipment needed to create, maintain, and seal it.

2) Distance. Less space means urban applications that strip away another big carbon footprint of trash: hauling it far, far away.

3) Methane. Better burnt than in the air. While decomp will eventually get you there, this process is much more efficient, with less escaped gas making it to the atmosphere.

4) Electricity now. Trash is a renewable resource. Getting the electricity from it now, rather than waiting for decomp, means less coal, natural gas, and other fuels being used for electricity now. Trash is a fuel that we won't run out of anytime soon and doesn't cost anything extra to harvest (unlike coal, which often requires digging away entire mountain peaks).

5) Landfills often leak into groundwater and runoff, despite prevention measures. It also smells. This process turns even the most offalicious trash into material that can be used in construction. While probably too cancerous for household applications, paving, footings, and other haevy construction uses abound.

Oakspar77777 - Very well articulated discussion thread!

You are right that this does qualify as a green technology but not a closed loop non-polluting. My concern maintains consistent with the pragmatist approach where waste stream itself is a huge natural resource for all sorts of materials. Now it is true that currently there are no real full scale technologies (5 tons per hour or higher) cost effective enough to recycle everything in the waste stream. However, look at Japan where consumers have to separate their daily waste into 32 different containers before they are picked up. Now one is suggesting that be case in the US as it will never happen, but some companies are on the right track to either provide a solution or incentive the public (recyclebank.com)

1) Landfill space. Yes - this is not the right strategy but given the economics invovled still the only "cheap" methodology. However, look into the future. These waste mgmt companies have landfills as their liabilities as they have to be maintained 30 yrs after closing for environmental protection and maintenance. This period accounts for 12-15% of the total disposal cost structure which is almost the exact percentage of their profit. So in laymen terms, over the life cycle of the landfill, the waste mgmt player makes approx. the same amount of money as it has to spend to remediate the site after it reaches full capacity.

2) Distance. Agree

3) Methane. Agree that pure methane coming from the landfill should be used rather then released.

4) Electricity now. It is difficult to compare burning trash and decomposition. Firstly, the Incineration companies are not burning the old waste but only the fresh waste from the consumers in order to get the tipping fees. secondly, incineration companies come in and buy out all of the players in their field completely disrupting any and all recycling efforts presented in the regional value chain. They do this because they can not turn the machine off once started requiring a constant flow of garbage and have such high installation and implementation costs (10s of to 100s of millions $) that it is crucial for them to control the local waste stream and in turn their financials. A simple home experiment is burn a piece of plastic and see how it smells. Think about if someone was burning 100s of tons in your back yard. which brings me to my third point. Whether you see it or not, these nano particles produced from incineration are like a new asbestos polluting of neighborhoods with neurotoxins and furanes. Now lets entertain the idea that 10yrs from now stack scrubbers can take out the toxins from the exhaust, all of the hardcore toxins are left in the fly ash which is either used as a replacement to sedimentary layering in the landfills or as filler aggregate in cement. So next time you build something out of concrete see if you are using something with toxic fly ash or bottom ash! My final response is that there is not one single incineration plant that has performed according to the "plan" and all of them dramatically exceed their pollution caps - but hard for municipalities to stop them at this point because so much has already been invested

5) I agree landfills are not the way to go. But using fly ash in any application is simply not environmentally friendly either. Look into any construction development project and you will see that it has not passed any of the standards (ASTM or ISO). The standards require you to grind the materials you use and test the powders. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to imagine what kind of toxins are present in this fly and bottom ash.

For those of you interested in this, you can visit youtube and see so many public accounts of incineration facilities sparking publi health issues like brain cancer, TB, and so many other chronic illnesses.

We have to reduce our consumption, reuse what we can, and recycle the core materials.

Technologies will arise that can handle waste without sorting or burning but in the mean time lets not pollute our finite world further by simply burning our problems away.

When someone says the word "we" as in "we" have to reduce our consumption, "we" have have to recycle into 32 distinct bins (how do you put all these out to the curb?)"we" have to live precisely sensibly according to some expert like TrueGreens assessment of the situation, he is really saying that "I" have to. Well, I and millions like me don't want to, not the least because I dispute the factual validity of almost every issue dear to the heart of people like TrueGreen.

For instance, anthropogenic global warming. Not to beat this horse to death, but get over it. It was the biggest scientific blunder of the last millenia. Shame on everyone who lent their name to that hoax. Shame on Barney Frank for telling guys like me he is going to make it impossible for me to buy a V-8 Chevy Tahoe (even the hybrid version.)

The argument against incineration comes down to the hoary green notion that there is no safe minimum level of anything in the air or groundwater. The old common sense rule of thumb is that you fight pollution with dillution.
That is because micro and trace amounts of most substances are not all that harmful, with the possible exceptions of plutonium, other radioactive heavy metals, and ricin. If asbestos was all that bad in trace amounts, the air around Mt. Shasta in California would kill thousands due to asbestos in surface dust. The major substantive evidence that asbestos kills related to long-fiber South African asbestos and heavy smokers. That combination was extremely unhealthy--100% fatalities! Removing wrapped asbestos cladding from pipes in buildings has been an idiotically grandiose waste of money. Torture statistics enough and they will confess to anything, but the billions of dollars spent on asbestos removal certainly could have been spent on something more essential to the long term health of our society, some more critical infrastructure, some element of better education.

In a sense, TrueGreen is making an argument against plastics in general. Consider the issue of medical waste. This stuff has to be incinerated for biological reasons but it is also very heavy in plastic. Why? Because plastic is a wonderful substance that helps us live a lot longer. So do most of the plastic products in our food chain, which dramatically cut food waste due to spoilage and decrease shipping costs, which equates to less energy spent transporting food. Milk is now much more efficiently transported in plastic jugs and aluminum cans are a more energy efficient way to transport beer than glass bottles.

DO THE MATH--we are not going to run out of room for landfills for many, many centuries. Collect the methane that arises from such areas and use it for something. Quit trying to mess with my lifestyle and the American dream. This most recent election is not the last one we are every going to have, you realize.

Dear Mike Cook,

I structured my arguments as objectively as i could attempting to address the issues at hand and respond to those raised. Furthermore, I provided references for those of you to look into the matter further. As your response was essentially an attack i will respond to your points yet refrain from your emotional delivery.

The "we" vs. The "I"
I specifically stated that it would not be possible to recycle into 32 containers as for the US that would be logistically impossible. However, i did provide the link to a company who is providing incentives the public to recycle through a similar structure compared to airline miles. So, would you recycle more if someone was paying you???

When you say that you dispute the factual validity of issues dear to the heart of people like "me"... I presume you are referring to global warming... which was not the core foundation of this discussion. Furthermore, this thread forum is not the scene to be educating people on global warming. The issue was specific to Municipal Solid Waste so i will remain consistent with the topic.

I don't care what car you buy but please look into the facts on your own time.

Safe minimum level of air pollution?
This statement does not help your argument at all. Fight pollution with dilution! What spacial area of air do you need to dilute an incineration plant with? Furthermore, what about all those individuals in the surrounding area outside of your supposed "dilution area". In the general air circulation there are over a 100 different Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) present, all of which either carcinogenic, mutagenic, and /or teratogenic. On this topic, there is a whole new medical branch called Nano Pathology to understand the effects of these neurotoxins and furanes. The studies to date show significant health issues ranging from disfigured babies to young adults under the age of 20 getting brain tumors and thyroid cancer. So, maybe you don't live close to one and simply don't care...i can not argue to that standpoint.

Billions are spent in abestos removal as a preventive measure to ensure that no further people get sick from its toxic nature.

In NO sense am i making an argument against plastics! Human kind relies significantly on its use and implementation across the diverse range of its demand. All of your examples are thus futile. This is not about medical waste it is about domestic waste. If a company (like that mentioned before) essentially pays (incentives) the individual to recycle plastic, paper/cardboard, aluminum, glass and anything else possible that is great. You don't have to join a program that disrupts your "life-style". But what will be the life style of your children and their children.

Mathematics vs. Economics
You made one correct statement - we are not going to run out of landfill room at least not in this century. However, as those landfills in use today reach capacity, it is very expensive for the waste mgmt providers to source and permit new locations and even more expensive for them to restructure their vertically integrated value chain to bring the waste to those sites now 100 - 200 miles further from the cities then the last site. Thus, these trucks have to drive much further to do the same thing. I would much rather that landfills are used and methane collection that arises is contained and reprocessed into energy. That is the lessor of the bad.

I said in the beginning that i would refrain from emotional delivery but your generalization of the American Dream to include a toxic polluted environment is simply gross misuse of the people's dream. Nonetheless, "dreams" are individual and maybe yours are distorted.

I don't understand what your point of the recent elections. If anything, it showed the American dream. More importantly, i think the Obama presidency will provide enormous incentives (in the billions) for energy efficiency and other environmental programs.

Always open for discussion

Thanks!

Ottawa has had a plasma gasification plant running at a site next to the Trail Road Landfill for almost a year. Additionally, a gas collection system in the landfill feeds the methane generated by the decomposing garbage into a power plant consisting of five 1MW Jenbacher generators. This generated power is fed directly onto the Ottawa Hydro electrical grid.

Truegreen, please visit the site www.startech.net. It doesn't burn the trash and let loose the harmful chemicals into the air. It makes two products after breaking up the trash into their harmless molecular components. The two products are a solid rock that can be used for many purposes in other companies and also a gas that can have the hydrogen processed for energy. (And as you probably know hydrogen's by-product is water... not some harmful chemical)

I live in asheville, N.C, and our landfill has the whole set of pipes for the methane and all, and they burn it out with the tower, well, couldent they somehow like, use the heat to make steam and turn a turbine to create electricity or something like that? or is that nice big torch up there only good for burning off the methane? theres got to be some way to harness that and use it , right? cause that thing is going all the time, and it dosent do anything but look like a big candle on the top of a large, smelly, ugly cake.......

True Green we hear you loud and clear and we need to hear more of this. Not because I personally have a bent on any specific method or elief in the ecologcal needs of the globe, but rather a desire to feel the truth as best we know it is what motivates our governments and indirectly our manufacturing. Dreamer!!

www.flogas.co.uk

Now, Plasma gasification on MSW has been proven to be the most environment friendly technology all over the world. I hope the gov will give enough attention and money to develop this subject and oneday it could replace the incineration.