Originally published August 6 2005
Clean energy from landfill methane
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Some landfills are trapping the methane gas that garbage produces and selling it to be used as a cleaner energy source.
Millions of people throw their trash away and forget about it.
But this is just the beginning of a process that could haunt our planet.
Garbage in a landfill decomposes and emits methane gas for 30 years or more.
Dina Kruger Dina Kruger "Methane is the second-most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and is responsible for about 15 to 17 percent of the warming of the atmosphere that has occurred over the last 150 years," says Dina Kruger, director of Climate Change at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, also known as the EPA.
Brown Station Landfill, in Prince George's County is an active participant.
It's located near Washington D.C. The open section of the landfill is taking up to 2,500 tons of trash per day.
Darryl Flick Darryl Flick "This is our drill: we place the waste, we push it up, we compacted it and we cover it with soil," says Darryl Flick, head of the Prince George's Waste Management Division.
This facility exports methane gas to be processed in other places, and sells 3.8 megawatts of power to the utility company.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is the main recipient of methane gas from another Maryland landfill.
Berry Green Berry Green Energy manager Berry Green describes the process, "The gas comes from the Sandy Hill landfill about 5 miles away.
It comes under ground in a 10-inch pipe and then it pipes it to the power plant here.
It comes above ground and goes to two of our five boilers inside the power plant and from there we use that gas to heat water to make steam and we send that steam through an underground network that heats about 31 buildings."
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