As they rumble throughout the Bay Area, hundreds of garbage trucks are running on \u00a0L-N-G: Liquid Natural Gas– \u00a0fuel produced at the dump.<\/p>\n
Every landfill produces methane gas, and while it’s been used to produce electricity for years, new technology is paving the way to use methane to produce gas for vehicles.<\/p>\n
Harvesting the methane also keeps thousands of tons of greenhouse gas from being released into the atmosphere. At the Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California, 200 wells extract methane from the depths, where it’s generated by decomposing organic waste. A series of tubes and blowers convey the landfill gas to a “mini-refinery” right next door. The methane is filtered and turned into L-N-G, which is cheaper and cleaner than diesel. Drivers of the garbage trucks say they appreciate having a fuel that offers the same horsepower, is clean burning, and helps the environment.<\/p>\n
While the plant in Livermore isn’t the first of its kind, it is the biggest and most efficient. Every day, it produces 13,000 gallons of liquified natural gas, and will eliminate 30-thousand tons of carbon dioxide every year.\u00a0 Perhaps the only drawback is the cost: $15-million dollars for this plant, due in large part to a multi-step purification system to filter out impurities in the methane. But supporters of this process say as technology improves, costs will come down, and more trash heaps will become fuel depots. It could also change the traditional view of the dump. As landfill operations director Kennth Lewis said, “we’re turning our landfills into an energy production facility, rather than just a simple disposal site.” A second facility opens in Southern California next year, and other large landfills are looking at how they can “close the loop,” by turning garbage into gas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As they rumble throughout the Bay Area, hundreds of garbage trucks are running on \u00a0L-N-G: Liquid Natural Gas– \u00a0fuel produced at the dump. Every landfill produces methane gas, and while it’s been used to produce electricity for years, new technology is paving the way to use methane to produce gas for vehicles. Harvesting the methane […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4809,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4809"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}