As far as I am concerned, the two biggest problems facing humanity are kicking our addiction to oil, and figuring out a way to get rid of all our garbage without stuffing it into big, endless holes in the ground.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could kill two birds with one stone? One day, we might be able to, but for now at least one company is working on a way to fix their fuel woes within the confines of their own business.
Waste Management, one of the biggest garbage companies in the country, says it will be able to produce 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily from just one landfill in Northern California.
By Susan Kraemer •
October 17, 2009
Some of the landfill gas at McCarty Road Landfill in Texas was captured for sale to a local utility, but the rest was just getting flared. Now, though, Ameresco Services captures that excess and sends it four miles through an underground pipeline to Anheuser-Busch brewery to meet their goal of getting 15 percent of their needs by 2010 promised a few years ago.
How much business is there to be made in capturing and using waste energy? Well, the company that developed the energy recycling waste-to-power system that helps fuel the biopower plant at the brewery has got to be one of the few companies in this economy to enjoy 47% growth over the last 5 years!
By Tina Casey •
August 7, 2009
The concept sounds like spinning fabric out of thin air, but the science is rock solid. Catalyx Nanotech, Inc., a relatively new player in the nanomaterials market, has completed its pilot project to manufacture nanofibers from landfill gas, using a patented cracking process to break down methane into soot free elemental carbon and hydrogen. Based on Catalyx’s success with a similar production facility in Canada, it appears that yet another way to recycle old landfills is right around the corner.
300 garbage collection trucks in California will soon be fueled by the same trash that they haul. Landfill gas will be purified and liquefied, producing up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily.
This facility at Waste Management’s (WMI: NYSE) Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.
Cleaner Fuel
Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020.
By Sarah Lozanova •
April 14, 2008
When generating electricity, roughly two-thirds of the energy is lost. Heat is created as a byproduct to spin turbines and later wastes away in cooling towers. Chicago has committed to produce 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2010 with a process call combined heat and power or cogeneration, which finds use for the generated heat. This process can be over 90% efficient.
Excess heat can be used for dehumidification, heating water, and process heat. In an ideal world, the electricity and heating loads for the given application are similar. Hospitals, prisons, paper mills, oil refineries, waste water treatment centers, and even large towns can be good candidates for this technology. Your car can even be an example, with waste heat from the engine being used to warm the interior.
By Noelle dEstries •
August 20, 2007
Reuters has a cool story “Eco-millionaires see boom times ahead” where they ask four eco-entrepreneurs two simple questions- ‘how did you get rich’ and “is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?”. It shouldn’t be a surprise that none of them think green business is a bubble- more they saw it as the way that everything will eventually run and as of now a very rich source of business opportunity.
Green business has already made
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By Noelle dEstries •
August 15, 2007
A big “Go Wildcats!” to the University of New Hampshire, where I attended my freshmen year of college (96/97), for their switch to landfill gas as the campus’s primary energy source. They are building a pipeline from a nearby landfill that will reduce their use of fossil fuels by 85%.
Inside Greentech has the full scoop, here’s a quick bit…
The University of New Hampshire in Durham announced today that the campus will run primarily on gas piped in from Waste Management’s (NYSE: WMI) landfill in Rochester.
Construction is expected to start immediately on the EcoLine gas processing plant.
The University of New Hampshire is the first university in the nation to use landfill gas as its primary energy source.
The landfill gas will replace commercial natural gas as the primary fuel in UNH’s cogeneration plant, enabling UNH to receive 80 to 85 percent of its energy from a renewable source.
“By reducing the university’s dependence on fossil fuels and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, EcoLine is an environmentally and fiscally responsible initiative,” said UNH president Mark Huddleston.
