Trash to energy: What’s the potential of the old Monroe County Landfill?There’s methane in yonder hill, but could it be used to produce energy?
By Dawn Hewitt 331-4377 |
dhewitt@heraldt.comOnce upon a time, when you threw stuff away in Monroe County, it went to the county landfill at the intersection of Fish and Anderson roads northwest of Lake Lemon.
The facility opened in 1971 but in January 2004, the landfill caught on fire and was closed for more than seven weeks. Financial problems led to its final closure in July of that year. But by Indiana Department of Environmental Management standards, the landfill still isn’t officially closed.
For four years, work there has been continuous, applying soil to cover all exposed areas, seeding these areas and applying erosion control measures. A small wastewater treatment system also has been installed to collect and clean liquid called leachate that percolates from the landfill.
“We completed the final closure work at the landfill last summer, and once we get some erosion issues repaired and vegetation established, we will request certification of closure from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, hopefully later this year or early next year,” said landfill director Tom McGlasson.
But that might not be the end of the story for the old Monroe County Landfill.
Drive by the site today, and you’ll see a grassy hill, with white plastic pipes sticking out. Those pipes are both a source of air pollution and a potential for energy production. Under the grass, years-old trash is decomposing and producing landfill gas, which primarily is methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can be captured and burned.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has formed a Landfill Methane Outreach Program whose mission is to encourage use of landfill gas for energy.
Example: Indianapolis’ South Side Landfill has a gas recovery program that provides power to Crossroads Greenhouse, Rolls-Royce and Indianapolis Power & Light Co. The recovered gas produces 5.03 megawatts of power.
So does the old Monroe County Landfill hold such potential?
Travis Murphy is program manager for renewable energy in the Indiana Office of Energy Development. His job is to help smaller landfills develop their energy potential.
Murphy, who has visited the local landfill, said that a profitable energy project requires more than a million tons of waste in place. Murphy said the EPA’s methane program lists the Monroe County Landfill has having only 400,000 tons of waste, but McGlasson said the landfill actually contains about 1.8 million tons of waste on 56.78 acres. McGlasson said the EPA list likely only includes the last permitted area of the landfill to accept waste, while there are two other, older areas on the property that also contain buried garbage.
According to McGlasson, “As for the methane extraction, we are currently working with (SCS Engineers,) a company out of Cincinnati, Ohio, on a feasibility study to determine if the quantity and quality of the methane in the landfill makes this a possibility. I have previously talked with two other companies (about 3-4 years ago) about this, and they determined that there wasn’t a sufficient quantity of gas there for the project to be economically viable for them; however, this was before we had completed the final closure for the entire landfill.”
As a landfill ages, decomposition slows, which means less methane is produced. In some of the older trash pockets at the Monroe County Landfill, gas production is declining, Murphy said. Since no new trash is coming in, gas production won’t rise, so energy production possibilities are highest right now and declining.
“The (Monroe County Solid Waste Management) District is very interested in moving forward with this, and we hope to be able to partner with this company to get an extracting system set up and do something productive with the methane,” said McGlasson, who mentioned that one possible use of the landfill’s methane might be to power the leachate collection and treatment system.
While the EPA considers landfill gas recovery a green energy source, there are known contaminants along with methane in landfill gas, so the energy source isn’t perfect. See
www.energyjustice.net/lfg for more on the problems of converting landfill gas to energy.
Landfill gas can provide energy at a stable, predictable cost over a lifetime of about 10 years from a landfill, Murphy said. Natural gas prices fluctuate, making landfill gas, if not perfectly green, a desirable commodity.
