Product lives matter

The past couple of days, we've been back to business, presenting on policies in Europe and the U.S. we've researched for different materials, learning more about waste management, and visited a landfill. The landfill Ecoserdiana currently reached its capacity for municipal solid waste (MSW), but is still collecting the biogas that is being released from the landfill and processing it to create mainly electricity. The biogas is seperated from the liquid portion of leachate via gravity due to differences in specific weight. The pictures below who the landfill itself, which is currently being filled with special waste- a European classification of waste in between hazardous waste and our definitiong of MSW. The gas generated from this is not mixed in with the MSW gas since it is more hazardous, and is colelcted seperately. The speical wasted is placed on top of the landfill area with the previous MSW with the covering of the MSW landfill with an impermeable layer and thus saves space and time.

We then went to the area where the biogas is processed. First it goes through a heat exchanger to dehydate the water content in the gas. Then, the gas, which is Methane and Oxygen mainly,is combusted, resulting in CO2 and water, and NOx. The NOx is minimized in production by allowing air into the inlet streeam which decreases the temperature and allows for less NOx to be produced. That was interesting to hear, since after learning about combustion reactions I have never heard of this technique, and it seems simple as well! The incomplete combustion of leftover CO is then heated to convert it to CO2. The heat is then used to turn an alternator to obtain electrical energy, and about 2-3MWs/day are produced. They sell all their energy to the grid and buy back the amount they need. It was interesting to also see that they are moving into using alternatives since the biogas will eventually stop being produced from the landfill since they are done collecting MSW. They have a solar plant as well and are researching alternative methods as well. Also exciting to see the control systems as seen in the pictures below-all of my homework questions come to life! When's my turn?? =]