# Industrial trash composting



## jpl1nh (Nov 2, 2007)

Check out this link: http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/aug/kb14landfill.cfm  Since the corn ethanol production ias pretty much an energy nuetral farce, it occured to me that virtually any bio waste could be landfilled and set to methane production over an ensuing period of 15 to 20 years.  Not the answer to all our energy needs, but perhaps a piece of the puzzle.  Imagine municipalities WANTING your leaves and brush, etc..


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## Burn-1 (Nov 2, 2007)

It makes an alum proud to see this. I would like to see if one of our local schools could get a wood chip boiler. That would be a great incentive for the taxpayers to bring brush to the dump. Chip it and store it for later use. The rising price of fuel oil is going to kill local school budgets around here in NH and with that the property tax rates will go up even more.


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## Mike Wilson (Nov 2, 2007)

My understanding is that they are already doing this at the largest landfill in the area, which is on Staten Island, NY.  They have piped the place to recover methane, and are using it.

-- Mike


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## jpl1nh (Nov 2, 2007)

Mike Wilson said:
			
		

> My understanding is that they are already doing this at the largest landfill in the area, which is on Staten Island, NY. They have piped the place to recover methane, and are using it.
> 
> -- Mike


I think your right Mike. Waste Management in particular has about 60 such projects slated and I know a number of them are operational now. Perhaps other landfill operators have done the same now but I don't know. What I'm wondering in particular is that basically this seems to me to be an alternative way to get bio-fuel from plant material. Instead of ethanol, its methane, which I believe is produced by decomposition in an anaerobic state with sulfur based microorganisms and unlike ethanol production is not sugar dependent. It seems to me that in this situation cellulose easily is utilized a "fuel" by the microorganisms as well as sugars, something we have yet to accomplish effectively in the manufacturing of ethanol. Is it feasible to do this on a larger scale actively pursuing methane production instead of it being a by product of trash disposal?


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## elkimmeg (Nov 2, 2007)

Most landfills have vents to gas off the methanol  there is one near ne that used to burn it off now they are using it to power an industrial complex It was claimed to have enough capacity that it coulkd power and heat a town /city of 75,000 for 20 years. the problem is many times these land fills are too rural to be connected to population centers


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## babalu87 (Nov 2, 2007)

Dumps should be located at prisons and prisoners should be made to sort through trash, what the hell else do most of them do all day?
Much of what many people throw away is compostable (cardboard, mass mailings, not to mention food stuffs etc)

Imagine how much smaller landfills would be if this were the case?


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## Corey (Nov 2, 2007)

babalu87 said:
			
		

> Dumps should be located at prisons and prisoners should be made to sort through trash, what the hell else do most of them do all day?
> Much of what many people throw away is compostable (cardboard, mass mailings, not to mention food stuffs etc)
> 
> Imagine how much smaller landfills would be if this were the case?



That is a good thought - I'd love to see prisoners doing some type of work that would benefit society.  Although I'd hate to see all the weapons they would come up with after a few days of sorting through piles of trash.


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## babalu87 (Nov 2, 2007)

cozy heat said:
			
		

> Although I'd hate to see all the weapons they would come up with after a few days of sorting through piles of trash.



As long as they use them to wack each other out, who cares?


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## jpl1nh (Nov 3, 2007)

babalu87 said:
			
		

> cozy heat said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Then you could compost the prisoners and produce methane :coolgrin:


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## Mike Wilson (Nov 3, 2007)

jpl1nh said:
			
		

> Then you could compost the prisoners and produce methane :coolgrin:



Hell, we feed them... put them on treadmills all day.

-- Mike


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## titan (Nov 3, 2007)

All good ideas,here's one that comes to mind for the worst of the bunch.....organ harvesting farm. :coolsmirk:


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## Mike Wilson (Nov 3, 2007)

I think organ harvesting could work.  We could offset our prison costs...  line up a death row inmate, and put his organs on eBay.  When you have enough bids on enough organs, just chill him down and part him out...  kind of like parting out an old Maverick.  Use the proceeds to buy food for the other inmates... and the next Maverick.

See... and you thought the green room was just for ideas on recycling compost...  ha!

-- Mike


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## MrWinkey (Nov 4, 2007)

I know the landfill near my town does this.  They have the local power company bring out large Cummins gensets and it powers about 100 homes.  They get polution credits for it.  Not the best deal IMHO because they get to do other nasties because of the credit they get from doing it.

They have the prisoners pickup trash at the local wast transfer stations around here now and they also get to do parks and rec and other stuff.

We have the whole Burn plant so most of the trash is burned and recycled/sorted.  The plant makes a ton of energy so it is profitable.  Makes more power than many of the small dams in the area.


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## cbrodsky (Nov 4, 2007)

My wife used to work as a chemical engineer for a company when we lived in Austin, TX that managed many of these gas recovery plants.  In fact, she visited the Staten Island operation mentioned above - they were involved in that one, another in CA that was now a golf course, one in OH - there are many of these around the country.

The problem is that methane gas is not terribly valuable as it is a low density fuel source and takes a lot of energy to clean it up for use.  The entire business model was highly dependent on selling tax credits for operating the business.  Additionally, they were sometimes paid by a metro area government for cleaning up the raw methane pollution.  So you had three revenue sources - the cleanup fee, the renewable energy production credits, and the value of the gas.  One of the ideas they were looking at was local storage for government vehicle fueling stations - but in the late 90s, gas was cheap, so that didn't seem very attractive.

Interestingly, one of the byproducts out of their methane purification process was food-grade CO2.  Unfortunately, nobody was interested in taking on the risk of consumers finding out they used "trash gas" in making their products 

About three months after she left this company, they were bought by Enron.  At the time, the CEO was involved in multiple simultaneous sexual harrassment claims and had a long history of problems in this area - Enron had no idea and missed that in the due dilligence...  anyway, you know how that story ends.

I just kick myself for not being smart enough to short sell Enron at the time based on what we were hearing from friends who stayed.  I think that was just months before Enron's final collapse which took down this company as well.  Not sure who owns the landfill operations anymore.

-Colin


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## Gene K. (Nov 4, 2007)

My God! My wife and I have been saying this for 20 years! I can't believe it, but someone actually agrees with me. Wow!



			
				babalu87 said:
			
		

> Dumps should be located at prisons and prisoners should be made to sort through trash, what the hell else do most of them do all day?
> Much of what many people throw away is compostable (cardboard, mass mailings, not to mention food stuffs etc)
> 
> Imagine how much smaller landfills would be if this were the case?


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