Turning garbage into ebergy...?

Question

So I have heard on the news that there have been new ways to turn garbage and p**p into energy which we humans can use. My question is...is this really being done to get the garbege out of the landfills? And, is it actually being done? If it's not, why isnt it being done?

Thnks!

Answer 1

I read something recently about small digesters for turning garbage into methane for home cooking in third world countries.  In other words on a scale for a single family to use. Low cost effective solution.

A company called Environmental Power Corp. makes an anaerobic digester that turns manure and other farm waste into methane.  Their system is supposed to be state of the art.

Two examples:

"Wild Rose Dairy in Webster Township, WI is home to an innovative renewable energy facility powered by cow manure and other organic waste. The farm is home to 900 dairy cows, and an on-site anaerobic digester creates methane-rich biogas from their waste, which is used to generate 750 kilowatts of electricity per hour—enough to power 600 local homes 24/7."

"Environmental Power’s Huckabay Ridge is the largest renewable natural gas plant in North America, if not the world. Huckabay Ridge generates methane-rich biogas from manure and other agricultural waste, conditions it to natural gas standards and distributes it through a commercial pipeline. The purified biogas,

called RNG®, is generated by Environmental Power’s subsidiary, Microgy, and is a branded, renewable, pipeline quality methane product."

Methane can be burned or used in fuel cells.

Fuel Cell Energy makes utility scale fuel cells that run on methane or natural gas.  Using fuel cells is cleaner than burning it,  though not as clean as pure hydrogen fuel cells.

Answer 2

if it waz in the news its prob. real

Answer 3

There's a "trash-to-steam" plant in Chester, PA. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, it is filled with residents who have very little political power. Nobody wants it in his neighborhood. Such a plant results in increased truck traffic and a portion of the refuse being lost onto the street. That's one reason it isn't being done more widely.

If you mean garbage (as opposed to solid wastes in general) being converted to energy, that is an old process. We usually use hogs as the converters; in the Middle East, I've seen fat-tailed sheep being fed on city garbage. The animals' manure gets spread on crops and the carcasses of the animals themselves get fed to us.

Answer 4

I think China has been successfully used garbage to heat up the flats for millions residents in the major cities for years. It is economical and environmental wise movement applied by the local government of Beijing and Shanghai. The Japanese has also successfully produced hard boards by pressing the collected garbage extremely hard for building houses but mostly used as the doors and wall-boards to replace the traditional fabric or cement ones. There's a new technology to convert organic compounds into fuel as described in the following website.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech...

I think it is for the sake of cost and inconvenience of doing environmental concerned matters for the global good. Many manufacturers just want to have easy and higher profits.

Answer 5

For years, dumps in California have produced methane gas for fuel. There is actually a garbage processing plant in Nevada I believe that separates and processes garbage into fuel.

Answer 6

There have been efforts to make waste-to-energy plants for years.  There is an incinerator in Detroit intended to do just that, but it's been tied up in legal knots because of pollution.

The company Ze-Gen has a process to turn demolition debris into clean fuel gas.  See the first link.

Sewage-treatment plants have produced methane for years; it's often burned in engines.  Landfills also make methane (and other gases) from the slow decomposition of trash.  This now has to be captured and burned for greenhouse-gas control, so as long as it has to be piped somewhere many landfills find it worthwhile to run engines on it.