Gas 2.0

Before our growing population with its output of waste puts us hip deep in this slop, we want to do something useful like make money converting all this waste into energy and fuel. Currently, as the waste decomposes, a greenhouse gas twenty times more destructive than carbon dioxide – methane – goes into the stratosphere, putting our future in a pressure cooker. The whole thing stinks.

There is a climate payoff as well as help with energy independence. California with its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) has put teams of scientists to work calculating well-to-wheels, or in this case waste-to-wheels, lifecycle emissions using the newly developed GREET 1.8 model. Biomethane has 4 times less lifecycle emissions than gasoline in the LCFS analysis. Because biomethane avoids release of the destructive greenhouse gas, biomethane into an internal combustion engine vehicle shows fewer emissions than electricity into a far more efficient electric vehicle.

In transportation, we will see the growing use of renewable electricity powering everything from city light-rail to city cars. We will also see the growing use of biomethane powering buses and the vehicles used by the biomethane producers. In Orange Country, California, where thousands of electric vehicles are used, there are also several hundred refuse trucks and public transit buses using biomethane from the nearby Bowerman Landfill where biogas is converted into liquid natural gas (LNG).

The Orange County Sanitation District is bringing online a combined heat and power plant developed by Air Products and Fuel Cell Energy that converts municipal waste into electricity, heat, and hydrogen fuel. In the county, hydrogen vehicles are in use by city fleets such as Santa Ana, the University of California, Irvine, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and even individuals that drive Honda Clarities and GM Fuel Cell Equinoxes. This breakthrough innovation results in record toilet-to-tank efficiency. Orange County Register Article

Texas, of course, thinks bigger than California. In Dallas, the McCommas Bluff Landfill will achieve 95 percent methane recovery from 30 million tons of waste. Output will scale from 35,000 gasoline gallon equivalents (GGE) per day to 122,500 GGE. Using a novel leachate recirculation process for early capture of biomethane would shrink the landfill growth by 3 feet per day, adding years of life to the landfill.

Summit attendees had mixed reactions about the idea of using biomethane as a vehicle fuel instead of the more common approach of making electricity by running biogas in large ICE gensets. Renewable electricity is in big demand as utilities across the nation struggle to meet renewable portfolio standards (RPS). Natural gas prices, however, are down 70 percent from their peak, making biomethane for fuel a losing proposition unless there is government funding or carbon credits to sell at a significant price.

But new ICE gensets increasingly cannot be permitted. Regulators have greatly tightened standards on emission of health damaging criteria pollutants and greenhouse gases. In California, air quality regulations are forcing farmers, landfill, and waste operators to spend more on clean-up of biogas. Turbines, fuel cells, and conversion to fuel are becoming more promising options. Regulators are also helping with selective co-funding of some projects.

Biofuels have gathered significant opposition in much of the world. Biomethane has avoided the food for fuels controversy associated with ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy and palm oil. Biomethane is normally processed from waste. Biomethane has over four times the energy production than corn ethanol from an acre of land. Clean Fleet Biofuels Reports

These challenges are also opportunities for Waste Management Inc (WMI). Of their 370 landfills, 33 percent already produce methane for energy, the rest flare the gas due to economics or regulatory difficulty in using ICE gensets to produce electricity. About 1,000 of Waste Management’s fleet of trucks run on either LNG or CNG creating the opportunity to produce their own fuel. 2,500 trucks run on diesel with WMI plans to hybridize.

Waste Management landfills contain significant organic waste which is suited for anaerobic digestion. WMI also captures significant waste that is lignin which is appropriate for its waste-to-energy plants. In the long-term it may be economical to convert the lignin to biofuel in a gasification process.

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