How much methane does garbage produce?

Question

I mean how much methane would 1 ton of garbage (of MSW) produce after being put in a landfill?

Answer 1

I don't know the specific answer but I used to work for a company that was researching using a city's municipal waste and extracting the methane from it through a complicated heat process.  They had calculated that the methane gas from landfill converted to energy to drive turbines would be enough to run a large city's electric grid.  The problem was that the scrubber technology to remove pollutants from the combustion process was inadequate, and the turbine blades would wear out too quickly.  It was almost feasible and that was many years ago.  If that is what you're wondering about, I just wanted to mention that it has been studied.

Answer 2

Its not even measured at landfills but you can get an idea by figuring how much trash is being dumped year after year. Its a crime that this is allowed to continue and it should be terminated. By using good engineering all the trash can be recycled into valuable raw material that would reduce the pressure on natural resources.  If everything that is now being dumped in landfills was properly recycled it would also reduce greenhouse gases by quite a lot.

Answer 3

Don't have any figures so the best I could do would be a rough guess.  There's one key factor you'd need to take into account and that is the type of garbage.

If you do a search for 'Methanogenesis' and 'Anaerobic Digestion' you should find some results.

Here's the relevant Wikipedia pages, they may provide the answer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogene...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_d...

Answer 4

Did you know that there is Methane gas around Uranus......really both the planet and your a**s.....lol.......love that