Gas from landfill helping to power waste firm trucks

By Steve Sharp of the Daily Times staff
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 12:54 PM CST

JOHNSON CREEK - The operator of the massive Deer Track Park Landfill in the town of Farmington is continuing its exploration and implementation of new technologies to recover energy from waste stored at the site, as well as at others.

According to representatives of Waste Management, which operates the Deer Track Park Landfill, gas from a California landfill is being transformed into liquefied natural gas to power recycling and waste collection vehicles. This is a project a Waste Management of Wisconsin official said signals a growing national interest in harvesting renewable energy from everyday waste.

Waste Management, Inc., North America's largest waste services company, and Linde North America, a leading global gases and engineering company, announced this week that their joint venture company has begun producing clean, renewable vehicle fuel from gas recovered at Waste Management's Altamont Landfill near Livermore, Calif. The facility is North America's largest one converting landfill gas to liquefied natural gas.

In Wisconsin, Waste Management generates electricity from gas it collects at landfills it owns in Jefferson, Green Lake, Kenosha, Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Rusk, Washington and Waukesha counties.

“The California project is a great example of how we can recover resources in waste, protect the environment and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels,” Todd Hartman, director of disposal operations overseeing Waste Management's landfills in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula said. “The demand for green energy is leading us to innovative technologies for capturing the renewable energy that's as close as your kitchen trash can.”

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The plant, built and operated by Linde, purifies and liquefies landfill gas that Waste Management collects from the natural decomposition of organic waste in its landfill. The renewable fuel it produces supplies a segment of Waste Management's California fleet and will eventually power more than 300 recycling and waste collection vehicles specially equipped to run on the clean-burning alternative fuel. The plant is designed to produce up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas a day.

The Wisconsin projects, including the one near Johnson Creek, produce a combined 47.5 megawatts of renewable, base-load power, enough to supply about 45,000 Wisconsin households. In Green Lake County, the company also supplies gas to a neighboring industrial user.

Waste Management is continually exploring new technologies and services to generate renewable energy from waste, Hartman said, and landfill gas-to-liquefied natural gas is a promising technology that complements Waste Management's other waste services in the areas of recycling, landfill operations, landfill gas-to-energy and waste-to-energy technology. The technology deployed by Linde and Waste Management in California has high potential to be implemented at other landfills across North America, he indicated.  

Waste Management officials said that, together with its other renewable energy projects, the new California facility will help the company advance its corporate sustainability goals, including investing in innovative technologies for managing waste, increasing fuel efficiency of its fleet by 15 percent and reducing fleet emissions by 15 percent by 2020.