Landfills' Methane Gas Can Become Energy Source

EPA regulations would create new market for units.
Story by Pam Kasey Email | Bio

CLARKSBURG -- An innovative coal mine safety technology manufactured in Clarksburg soon may help landfills produce energy, too.

KSD Enterprises created its Methane Buster in the early 1990s to remove the explosive gas from coal mines, and it has been a successful product.

"All the major coal companies -- Consol, Peabody, Arch, what used to be RAG and is now Foundation Coal -- all those people use our units," explained KSD Managing Partner Gary Disbennett.

The company boasts 150 custom units in operation across the United States and in Mexico, Australia and India. It is negotiating with China.

But after expanding internationally, the partners began feeling the market would be tapped out at some point, Disbennett said. They realized the Methane Buster would work just as well on landfills.

Waste in a landfill first begins to decompose with oxygen, according to Sarah Simon, a manager at the federal Environmental Protection Agency's landfill methane program.

"But once a landfill is covered over, within a year or two, you've made a sealed environment that has no oxygen," Simon explained. "And then the bugs that don't need oxygen start to decompose it in a way that creates methane."

The methane smells bad and can be a nuisance for neighbors. The EPA also considers it a potent greenhouse gas.

But the Methane Buster, essentially a Ford engine that runs a blower, can pull the methane from a landfill just as it does from coal mines, said John Byam of KSD consultant Clean Energy Systems.

In a demonstration project that ended last September, the device is reported to have performed successfully at Waste Management Inc.'s Meadowfill Landfill in Harrison County. The project was funded by the EPA through the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation.

The Methane Buster's design proved well suited to the low-quality gas landfills produce.

"A lot of people build engines that'll run on a fixed percentage of methane, but this engine's fuel control system allows it to operate at various concentrations of methane without modification," said KSD Partner Jake Rockwell.

And operation costs are low.

"On the outlet side of the blower, they just put a little pipe that feeds part of the gas back into the engine to operate it," Byam explained. "There's no net energy cost to run the engine once you get it up and running."

The rest of the methane can simply be flared off. Better yet, it can produce usable energy. Meadowfill's unit, for example, runs a 300-kilowatt generator that operates the landfill's aeration pond pump and saves $100 to $200 a day and more than $36,000 a year, Byam said.

If Meadowfill captured all of its methane, the federal Department of Energy estimates it could supply 20 percent of the adjacent FBI building's energy needs for 40 years, according to Disbennett.

"That gas can also be used, for instance, if you wanted to put a tire recapping operation there, or a greenhouse, something that requires a lot of heat," he said.

Depending on its application, the Methane Buster typically sells for $60,000 or $70,000, said H. David Cutlip of KSD investor Comvest Capital, with installation and collection pipes adding $250,000 to $500,000. Most applications pay for themselves in three to four years.

Regulation expected from the EPA would create a new market for the Methane Buster.

Large landfills -- those with more than 2.5 million tons of waste in place and testing at more than a certain level of emissions -- have been required to capture their methane since the late 1990s.

But of the nation's 3,000 or so landfills, Disbennett said, 2,000 are smaller and expected to be regulated soon.

A range of financial incentives, some of which can be pieced together, will help make such projects economically viable, according to information collected by the Mountain Institute.

Even before the regulations hit, though, there is some market.

The Raleigh County Solid Waste Authority, for example, is seriously considering a landfill gas-to-energy project, according to Executive Director William Patton. Possible uses include building heat, lights for a coming golf course or fuel for landfill vehicles -- all at a scale that wouldn't be affordable with a larger commercial methane collection installation.

"Nobody has wanted to address the small to medium landfills because there wasn't enough money in it for them," Disbennett said. "We have."

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