Clean fuel, icky origins
LIVERMORE, CALIF. — Hundreds of trash trucks across California are rumbling down city streets using clean fuel made from a dirty source: garbage.
The fuel is derived from rotting refuse that San Francisco and Oakland residents and businesses have been discarding in the Altamont landfill since 1980. Since November, the methane gas created from decaying detritus at the 240-acre landfill has been sucked into tubes and sent into an innovative facility that purifies and transforms it into liquefied natural gas.
Almost 500 Waste Management garbage and recycling trucks run on this new source of environmentally friendly fuel instead of dirty diesel.
In a state that has passed the most stringent greenhouse gas reduction goals in the United States, the climate change benefits of this plant are twofold — methane from the trash heap is captured before entering the environment and use of the fuel produces less carbon dioxide than conventional gasoline
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6806678.html
The fuel is derived from rotting refuse that San Francisco and Oakland residents and businesses have been discarding in the Altamont landfill since 1980. Since November, the methane gas created from decaying detritus at the 240-acre landfill has been sucked into tubes and sent into an innovative facility that purifies and transforms it into liquefied natural gas.
Almost 500 Waste Management garbage and recycling trucks run on this new source of environmentally friendly fuel instead of dirty diesel.
In a state that has passed the most stringent greenhouse gas reduction goals in the United States, the climate change benefits of this plant are twofold — methane from the trash heap is captured before entering the environment and use of the fuel produces less carbon dioxide than conventional gasoline
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6806678.html
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by El Theo on -
This isn't all that new a technology, I don't think. There is a pipeline that runs from the Woolworth Rd. landfill in Shreveport that supplies methane gas to the General Motors plant for power generation, from what I'm told. It's been there for quite a while.
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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Question - Did it take from 1980 until recently for the detrius to decay sufficiently to produce enough gas to fuel this project? Just wondering ... seems like a long time to wait to get fueled up, even longer than the lines during the gasoline shortages.
80)
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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on
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sesport,
Not sure how long it takes stuff to rot enough to get a plentiful supply of methane, but the plants to purify the methane cost a lot to build. Seems simpler to hook their CNG compressors to a gas main. Same benefits of burning a cleaner fuel, with a lot less hassle and expense.But I see the plant was built with grants (subsidies) from the taxpayers' money, so from a business perspective, it might not be economical unless they got "free" money.
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