[Digestion] landfill gas vs. controlled anaerobic digestion

[Paul Harris]

G'day Jason,

With this sort of project you need a system approach and look at how
much effort may be spent in "improving" the operation compared to how
much more output (biogas/compost/etc) is actually produced (all a bit
hard to do accurately!).

I really like Albert Einstein's philosophy - "Things should be as simple
as possible, but no simpler".

Landfill is "solid digestion" (or "anaerobic composting"), so it's a bit
different to more conventional "liquid" digestion but the processes are
the same.

Duncan Martin may have some useful inputs here, too.

Happy digesting,
HOOROO

Jason Perry wrote:
> 
> There is a landfill in northern New York that is in the process of
> setting up a system to collect landfill gas for generating electricity.
> Yard & garden waste and wood waste are separated and not added to the
> landfill. Currently there is no mechanism for separating domestic or
> commercial food waste in the district served by the landfill, so unless
> it is voluntarily separated at the source one can assume that it all
> goes in the landfill.
> 
> What anaerobic digestion conditions can be assumed to exist in the
> landfill? Is it essentially a psychrophilic digester?
> 
> Is it safe to assume that there would be more beneficial to
> source-separate the food waste and divert it to a controlled (meso- or
> thermophilic) anaerobic digestion plant?
> 
> Any ballpark ideas as to how much methane can be collected and used from
> a given amount of food waste degrading in a landfill compared to its
> ultimate potential methane yield?
> 
> Cheers,
> Jason Perry
> 
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-- 
Mr. Paul Harris
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