Tuesday, May 19, 2009

By Dan Wallach

And it has to be got out of there sometime, said Tom Warner, the city's public works director.

"We have to monitor it now," Warner said. "Eventually, the methane escapes into the air."

And that's bad because methane is at least 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But it's also a good fuel, and that's where the landfill can become an economic resource.

"We're supporting any project that will bring methane recovery," Warner said.

The BioEnergy Alliance for Southeast Texas might have the answer.

Keith Rogers, the alliance's facilitator, said a Canadian company, SHEC Energy, recently completed its preliminary design and its financial analysis for a methane recovery system at the landfill.

The company would be able to separate the methane into carbon dioxide and natural gas, purifying the gases into "food grade" carbon dioxide, as in carbonated soft drinks, and "fuel grade" natural gas suitable for injection into a commercial pipeline.

The project would cost perhaps $34 million, so investors will have to be found. The landfill is capable of producing 2,800 cubic feet per minute of natural gas, which would be the equivalent of 11 million gallons of motor fuel per year.

At $2 per gallon, that could be revenue of $22 million a year, Rogers said.

A second phase of the project envisions using a solar heat array to create hydrogen from the methane.

An eventual use of the natural gas could be as a vehicle fuel. The city now spends about $8.7 million on its vehicle fleet and maintenance, Warner said.

That includes "rolling stock" of about 900 wheeled vehicles, but that's counting things like trailers that don't have engines, he said.

Using natural gas to fuel the city's fleet could help to reduce costs, but the most likely use for landfill-produced fuel is to run landfill equipment like compactors and dirt haulers, Warner said.

The expected service life of the landfill as a source of gas is at least 30 years, Rogers said.

Warner said the landfill itself should last another 60 years. The city has permits to install new cells atop existing ones, so its service life is essentially doubled from what it was.

Rogers said there are more than 400 landfill projects across the country in which methane is drawn off, but most do so to power gas turbines to make electricity.

Making commercial grade fuel would be a new and more profitable use, he said.

Then there's that carbon dioxide left over. That simply would be vented, he said.

It seems there would be resistance to "food grade" carbon dioxide made from landfill methane, Rogers said.

But think for a moment about the new tax that could be levied on carbonated soft drinks to help pay for health care.

If you knew there was a source of free carbon dioxide - already purified - then you could arrange to draw some of it off for your own soft drink still.

Imagine for a moment all those backyard soft drink distilleries.

We'd become a nation of tax-avoiding Dr Peppershiners.

But we'd all get caught. The FBI would just follow the sound of the burps.

Copyright © 2009 The Beaumont Enterprise