University of New Hampshire to get 80-85% of its Energy from Landfill Gas

The University of New Hampshire president Mark Huddleston recently announced that the UNH, in cooperation with Waste Management of New Hampshire, Inc., has launched EcoLine, a landfill gas project that will pipe enriched and purified gas from Waste Management’s landfill in Rochester to the Durham campus.

UNH is the first university in the nation to undertake a project of this magnitude; it will not only stabilize the university’s fluctuating energy costs but significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which have doubled in the last five years and grown at an annual rate of 18.9 percent.

The renewable, carbon-neutral landfill gas, from Waste Management’s Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise (TREE) facility in Rochester, N.H., will replace commercial natural gas as the primary fuel in UNH’s cogeneration plant, enabling UNH to receive 80-85 percent of its energy from a renewable source.

“By reducing the university’s dependence on fossil fuels and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, EcoLine is an environmentally and fiscally responsible initiative,” said Huddleston. “UNH is proud to lead the nation and our peer institutions in this landmark step toward sustainability.”

Construction is set to begin immediately on a landfill gas processing plant in Rochester which will purify the gas, and the 12.7 mile underground pipeline which will transport the gas from the plant to the university’s Durham campus. UNH is expected to fuel its cogeneration plant with landfill gas by the fall of 2008. Estimated cost of the project, including the construction of a second generator at UNH, is $45 million.

Once construction on EcoLine is completed, the pipeline will not be visible, running four feet underground along Rochester roads, the Spaulding Turnpike, and the Pan Am Railway’s right-of-way onto UNH property. At UNH, landfill gas will replace commercial natural gas in UNH’s cogeneration (co-gen) plant, the primary source of heat and electricity for the five million square-foot Durham campus. The co-gen plant, which began operations in 2006, captures waste heat normally lost during the production of electricity and uses this energy to heat campus buildings, making more efficient use of energy resources.

EcoLine will also have a major impact on UNH’s carbon dioxide emissions. It will reduce the university’s greenhouse gas emissions an estimated 67 percent below 2005 levels and 57 percent below 1990 levels.

As the nation’s largest owner and operator of landfills, Waste Management recently announced a major landfill gas-to-energy initiative that will result in the creation of an additional 60 renewable energy facilities. In total, Waste Management will generate more than 700 megawatts of clean renewable energy – enough to power 700,000 homes or replace over eight million barrels of oil. A pioneer in landfill gas-to-energy projects, Waste Management designed and operated its first such facility in the U.S. over 20 years ago. With 281 landfills in North America and more than 100 already having landfill gas-to-energy projects underway, Waste Management is in a unique position to expand waste-based renewable power generation across the country. Waste Management currently has two landfill gas-to-electric plants at TREE producing green power for over 9,000 homes which will continue to operate, while excess gas will be sent to UNH’s new and innovative renewable energy project.

Landfill gas is a naturally occurring by-product of landfill decomposition. Waste Management has a state-of-the-art gas collection system at TREE consisting of over 300 extraction wells, miles of collection pipes, and compressors to capture the landfill gas.

An very educational landfill tour of the TREE Landfill can be found at the Waste Management website.

Comments

[Mark]

This is interesting, but I wonder as to its life expectancy. It would seem that at some point, the gas pressure would begin to fade.

[Kit P]

Landfill gas is an excellent and economic source of renewable energy. Unfortunately the press release does not provide enough information about the merits of the project.

[technofossil]

Lots of landfills collect methane to generate power-- a good thing, though not a huge source of power.More interesting, perhaps, is the Cow-Power choice in nearby Vermont, collecting dairy farm waste.

What I don't understand is why spend $45M on a pipeline instead of putting a generator at the landfill (like everyone else), then using a wire to transmit the electricity. I guess so UNH can have an accounting of carbon emissions separate from everyone else.

[Rob]

The reason is cogeneration: The waste heat from power generation is being used for heating, which can't be done efficiently if the generator is offsite.

[JohnBo]

Locating the generator at the load also eliminates 2 substations and a transmission line.

Also, this keeps Waste Management out of the electric utility business which is a big maintenance and reliability pain.

It sounds like a good deal for everyone. It would be interesting to know how long the gas will last.

[Dr. Hussain Alrobaei]

The benefits of generation of electricity from waste biogas are multi-faceted. Potential landfill related emissions to air are reduced and green power is generated, off-setting the need to consume fossil fuels to provide an equivalent amount of energy. The recent studies have proven the perfect technical feasibility of the utilization of the gas generated in the landfills. They have also shown that excellent levels of yield can be reached with the use of simple technologies without compromising the quantity and the productivity of the system, viabilizing an energetic alternative available in the surroundings of all urban conglomerates, specially those of the Third World. However, new landfill sites can be specially developed in a configuration which encourages anaerobic digestion. In these new sites, the pipe system for gas collection is laid down before the waste is deposited, thus optimizing the gas output, which can be as high as 1000m3 per hour and last up to 20 years. The landfill gas is generally used for electricity generation, using large internal combustion engines to drive generators of around 500kWe generators to match the normal gas supply rates of around 10GJ per hour (depending on the size of the landfill).
It is very important that we stress that the implementation of any project on landfill gas recovery, wherever in the world, must be preceded by careful studies of its feasibility; local peculiarities should be evaluated in order to determine the technologies to be used and whether the project is viable both economically and strategically.But one thing is for sure: the waste landfill gas is an energy source that cannot be left aside for it is, generally, much more economic than any other fuel currently available, provided that the consumption sites are near the landfills.

[Kit P]

Dr H, does phd stand for pile it high and deep?

While landfill gas (LFG) is one of the best sources of renewable energy, 95% of the environmental benefit is achievable by just flaring the gas. Using poor quality LFG (or gas from a WWTF) is a major engineering challenge and requires a good O&M program.

Any landfill that produces enough LFG to economically produce useful energy represents a failure in solid waste handling. A win-win -win (multi-faceted as Dr H would say) project would be combing 'cow power' and high carbon waste recycling (you know, paper).

An interesting think happened at a dairy farm that used recycled paper for bedding. When they added an anaerobic digester (AD) to treat manure, biogas production was so high that a second generator was added. I think this can be explained by considering enzymes in dairy cow manure, the physical properties of paper or wood shavings to give more places for bacteria to grow, and getting the carbon/nitrogen ratio right. This produces more energy and high quality compost. Both products represent capturing polluting waste streams. Win-win -win but hard to explain.

[Paul Dietz]

The biogas market is one that Capstone Turbine moved to after their initial focus on hybrid turbine automobilies fizzled. There's a school not far from where I live that gets its power and heat largely from a nearby landfill, combusted in these microturbines. One thing they have to do is clean up the gas to remove siloxanes (silicon-containing volatile compounds) that would otherwise cause silica deposits in the turbines.

[Kit P]

I was not aware that Capstone has considered a putting a turbine in a POV. Maybe they have not heard of angular momentum. POV should have the same turning characteristics in both directions.

[Paul Dietz]

Kit P: apparently this was not considered a problem. The notional design (with the now-defunct Rosen Motors) even included a separate flywheel instead of a battery for energy storage.

Capstone has had some of their microturbines installed in hybrid buses and trolleys, although not beyond a pilot project scale.

[Kit P]

Microturbines installed in hybrid buses and trolleys may not have the same issues as a POV