Landfill Engineering

Hi Dread, Can you post any details on your liquidfaction process? My idea uses very basic chemistry but somewhat complex refining. No pollution will exist however-no waste gas(except O2) or liquid(except water).

This thread jogged my memory from about three to four years ago. I was talking with a guy that has some contacts that have been working on a rotary kiln. They were proposing to feed it with the trimmings that the U.S. park service cuts to maintain fire roads. The output would be some kind of alcohol and it would use a portion of its output to fuel the low fire that caused the decomposition of the tree refuse. At that time they hadn't overcome the lubricity problems to allow them to use it in diesel engines without ruining the injector pumps. They estimated that the parks service could run thier entire fleet on just the trimmings, let alone the fact that this same uinit could be used with trash as well. It would require the presorting of the trash to remove metal, glass, and other recyclables, which I'm all in favor of as it would greatly extend the lifespan of our landfills. Then we could go back in and mine the older landfills for these same results.

Hi Javelinman, Mining old landfill is one of my objectives as well as ending the practice of landfill use. Its a mis-management of waste dating to the stoneage and needs to be removed from our world altogether. As for making ethanol; I would not make that product from anything unless it was used for drinking. Oil making is the way to go but, not the way it so now done(which dates to the 1920's). I have a new way of doing the job of making oil. Its a very different result when nature makes than when poorly engineered manmade devices do it. A well engineered system will make oil from most any waste matter containing carbon such as sewage, farm litter and urban trash as well as coal and shale. I don't understand why we pay $70/barrel for oil when it can be made for less than $20/barrel. What sense does that make?

There is an company installing Pyrolysis plants worldwide and operating from Belgium. Pyrolysis plants eat municipal waste and produce energy. I think they have an office in US as well but please contact Dave Sleuwaegen from Meldynique Solar) on my behalf. I know the company name doesn't sound like having to do with landfills... But check it out. Randolph Toom

Does the process involve the use of biological processes? I ask because of the use of the word"eat". My idea uses heat or thermal processes too hot for living cells to exist which is good because its way too risky to employ bacteria-you never know what might by evolving.

greendog; building machines is the easy part. practical concepts are the challenge. I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject including the defining of raw waste composites of which I am sure you would have already given considerable consideration.

Cheers

Hi ABS, It mostly a matter of putting a lot of thinking into the problem and the value of changing so basic a process as dumping our unwanted stuff in landfills. After all its older than anything and predates all human artifacts. My idea is to start slowly and learn as we go along. The first step is setting up a system to process waste into oil at a profit which can be done without generating pollution. New concepts need to be kicked around but reducing waste to basic molecules is how I would begin. I would design a container that can be loaded with waste matter containing carbon and supply hydrogen in metered quantities but there are better ways I'm sure to do the job. I ran into many problems well before getting to the drawing board. Anyway, as I see this detail all waste matter can be made into products of value and about 25% of the energy used by humans can be extracted the trash being put in landfills. And the real value in altering the way we mis-manage waste is in the major environmental improvements that can be made. Some of these are obvious and others not so much

Global issue greendog; simply, the problem is a direct consequence of World Government promoting Global Consumer Generated Economics, (GCGE2020). An array of argument remains promotional to this fact, including;

• The Consumer is always correct
• Ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law,

both observations remain the primary catalyst of mankind's self destruction. Worse to the plight of waste reduction and renewable energy, is dealing with departments such as the New South Wales State Office of Fair Trading just to name one.

Apart from the OFT having poor and destructive environmental economic policy, this office boast guilt of false advertising, deliberate discriminative prejudice and collusion at senior ministerial level.

Waste Management is as good as gets for now friend! Try not to be tricked into thinking that having the Cart before the Horse is your fault, not so!

Cheers!

Hi ABS, I agree with your rant but it does nothing to fix the problem which basically is an engineering job. As everyone knows trash has been deposited in landfills for all of human history and that is now unsustainable-we now generate more trash than can be deposited in landfill at a reasonable cost. By rethinking this mindless process it can be seen most of the stuff we deposit in landfill has value if good engineering is used to develop a new process to manage waste. My studies indicate all of the stuff we lable waste can be transformed into raw material to the benefit of everyone and also reduce pollution. Its a big job with many implications so pointing the finger of blame for why it can't be done is just a minor item. Its better to focus on the benefits that will accrue from doing the job that can't be done.

I don´t think I must remind you all that FIRST comes WASTE-RECYCLING: 1. Sort trash into renewable and non renewable parts. This means JOBS!! 2. Process renewable ones into humus and gardening earth. This also means JOBS! 3. Sort out and Recycle metals. Metals are all precious. This also means JOBS! 4. Domestically used PLASTIC and PAPER are ENDEMICNATURAL RESOURCES !!! and are used for generating city heat and electricity with steam turbines. 5. I do not understand why landfills are still in practice. In Europe and specially in Germany all WASTE and TRASH get RECYCLED FIRST and then PYROLISED for obtaining heat and electricity with low pollution levels. Recycling ALSO generates JOBS to the community! The only reason for which nuclear energy was kind of stopped in Germany during the 80´s, is because landfilling got replaced by WASTE-RECYCLING !!! Forget expensive chemical processes to produce oil! It would´ve been done long ago if were possible at a reasonable effort and price. You may as well start reasoning in terms of special relativity. A philosophical level of reasoning that will not take us anywhere in our surrounding physical reality ... it produces lots of "could be´s" and ideas that could in priciple be brought to work. GET REAL, GET JOBS! WASTE-RECYCLING and PYROLYSIS !!!

Hi, I don't have any complaints with sorting trash but not much profit is to be had doing that. Its not very healthy work-very dirty and in Europe its exported to Africa while the USA exports its waste to China. Very hippocratical don't you think? We rich people export all our dirty work to poor countries. Burning trash is just as dumb an idea as landfill so thats no good either. Making oil is the smart approch to ever expanding garbage problems. You are right its never been done but that doesn't mean it can't be done. And just because no one has done it means nothing. Its a shame that so little effort is used to do anything smart reguarding waste matter because just a little good engineering would generate many good jobs as well as much new wealth as well as benefit the envionment. Make oil /stop dumping/

Actually the USA doesn't expport its waste to China, we have more than enough really cheap places in the US to transport waste to. The cost of exporting waste to china would be prohibitive. As someone who deals with the removal and transportation planning for hazardous waste, I can tell you it pretty much all stays in the US. Just exporting waste more than about 50 to 100 miles become prohibitive, since we have no shortage of landfills and open cheap land any where in the country except in metropolitan NYC. And extremely hazardous materials go to places like Kettleman City, California and other similar places across the country, while radioactive materials get buried in Nevada.

This is the ideal recycling if you truly think about it, since most of the waste is derived from minerals we mine from the earth organic or inorganic. Plus the burial of organic materials such as plastic is a way to sequester carbon, and eventually recover the coal/petroleum we have mined. We just need to bury it in secured dry cells so we minimize the potential for impacts to ground water.

As far as doing anything for the sole sake of creating jobs with out any real consideration for the efficient use of labor for production of useful items, this is a bad idea. It takes time away from the potential time that could be used to train people in useful trades. Some efficient recycling is worthwhile, such as mining metals, but some is just a waste of money intended to keep people busy and unaware, such as recovering many of the plastic items we use. The best way for recovering plastics and glass is before they become contaminated through exposure to garbage, and are easily sorted at the source.

Hi RCE, I don't agree with your take on trash. And if you think about it I'm sure you will be able to come up witk a better story. First of all You must see landfill pollutes and if this ancient practice was replaced by a good, well engineered system that made oil out of the stuff we leave to nature everyone would be better off. Most of the stuff being mined would be recycled thereby reducing the need for mining in my world. The system would be better off by far because there is a lot of oil that can be cheaply produced thereby reducing the need for pumping crude out of the ground. Its a big project that would create millions of new good jobs while eliminating a lot of bad jobs no one wants. Making oil using a well engineered system would be a major game changer in the world that would reduce pressure caused by shortages of oil projected to occur in the near future. Everything about the current art of waste management would change when it becomes clear oil can be made at a very low cost relative to the current world price of crude pumped from the ground.

The system would be better off by far because there is a lot of oil that can be cheaply produced thereby reducing the need for pumping crude out of the ground.

I haven't yet seen a scheme for extracting oil from this source which provides a cheap source of oil. So far they have all been uneconomic.

Very few recycling schemes actually cover their costs, let alone make a profit.

Doing something to create jobs becomes self defeating in the long run, because someone has to pay for the uneconomic use of labor and resources. The money needed comes from those who are making a profit (and hopefully also doing something useful), reducing their profitability and increasing their overheads. This reduces their ability to operate and eventually spins off into less jobs.

We should continue doing the research and engineering to make recycling pay, but it doesn't seem to be a proposition yet, though we can hope it will be in the near future.

In the meantime, if we shred all material which goes into landfill, the increased surface area gives a better environment for the bacteria to break it down quickly, while inert materials (some plastics?, glass, ceramics etc) become soil extenders, keeping the soil structure open, thereby encouraging aerobic bacteria and discouraging the smelly anaerobes which are the main culprits in ground water pollution. If a suitable barrier is inserted to prevent movement of landfill water into the general ground water, the site becomes harmless to the environment. At the end of it's life, the landfill site becomes part of a park or sports fields or other public amenity.

A suitable temporary barrier to water transport horizontally can be obtained by lime slurry injection into a "curtain" of drill holes around the site, while standard monitoring bores enable timely remedial action to prevent contamination.

Except where land is at a premium, landfill is still the cheapest method of disposal. Properly done it can also be harmless to the environment and socially beneficial in the long term.

Hi Sceptic, The gas turbine was not practical until someone fixed a perception problem and the steam engine was very weak for more that a century until a guy did the fix. Fixing the problem is not on your adjenda but at least you have hope that a better way might come along. My point is the problem can be fixed at the current state of art. Good engineering is needed not bandaids as you suggest. How long can human culture continue polluting the planet and hide the facts under the delusion of political action. Its an engineering problem and just because you and i as well have never seen a system that works well managing waste and depends on landfill doesn't mean a good system won't work any better than what we have. Oil can be made from many products at a very low cost(much less than $80/barrel the current world price for oil)

Yes landfills are prone to some degree of pollution, not necessarily contamination of necessary resources, but they do pollute. On the other hand every waste recover project I have ever seen not only pollutes the environment, they also are prone to much higher risk for contaminating resources like air, arible land, surface water, and groundwater. The only places I have ever seen properties taken by the State were recycling facilities that had so contaminated the land as to cause acute poisonings locally. In order for such facilities to be viable and competitive they must have a high market for the raw resources that are being recovered, and continually cut costs. In the waste management industry, particularly in waste mining and recovery, this cost cutting tends to come from the handling of their own concentrated waste products, many of which have become hazardous wastes due to the concentration process related to extracting the desired resources. Now since hazardous wastes are orders of magnitude more expensive to transport and dispose of, many operators try to cut corners thereby increasing public risk. The production of oil from wastes, is only economically feasible above a specific cost point. These kind of schemes always seem to pop up when crude oil prices get high and depend on the price of crude only remaining high, and then at some near future time the prices drop and such facilities go broke. So the next question becomes what do you do with such facilities when the price for crude oil drops below that cost point, and who pays to close the facility and recover the brownfield to usable land? How do you handle it is crude oil drops to $45 a barrel?

Hi RCE, I agree it has never been done for the third time now-hopefully 3rd time ends this with we agree on this point. Can we explore how it can be done right? Making oil is done in natural settings but no one knows how she does the job(including myself). Oil is made from coal by using a process that is poorly engineered and pollutes the environment. My way to make oil is totally different than both what nature does and what has been state of art for 80 years. Its very simple and efficient to make oil from coal and methane but its never been done. My idea is to use methane or another proton donar to break chemical bonds such as C-C or C-O bonds in a container that is isolated from the atmosphere and form bonds like C-H or C-H-H. There is no pollution generated by this but there are many engineering details needing a lot of work. There is no contamination and only oyygen and water is exhausted the the environment. As you can see there is lots of oil being produced which has a value at this time of $20 to $100 per barrel. And that is just one of many valued products that now are being dumped. Please don't compare this to anything now in use because its a different process.

Oh sure there is pollution generated, exactly the pollution that is general most noted for landfills, aesthetic pollution. Landfills when finally filled and capped at least end up having to have a fully pre-funded closure built in to the facilities costs. So in the end you get a park from a landfill. Plus what do you do with all the portions of the waste you receive or recover that are not composed of carbon, lets say lead from ashes, some resilient durable organics like PCBs, or something of that sort? Which also brings up the question what happens if you contaminate a bath of oil with something like dioxins or maybe heavy metals, nitrates or asbestos? How do you handle all the small nicad batteries and just general junk that doesn't every get fully separated prior to your receipt of the wastes? and how about the organic residues that can not be degraded/hydrolyzed since you removed much of the organic content the solids that remain would now likely have a higher concentration of heavy metals? So what happens to the wastes you generate? It may be so concentrated now that you could not landfill it. As I did not indicate anything about whether it has or has not been tried in the past previously, I indicated that such idea pop up frequently when oil prices rise, and there isn't much consideration given to how to keep them economically feasible when the prices drop again, especially since the price of oil is artificially inflated and can be easily driven back down to below $45 a barrel if the entities involved in the priicing so desire. Why would someone want to invest in a untried scheme that is based on competing against a natural resource when the artificial pricing of that resource is high, but has no plan for competing if the prices drop? It is not that this is a new scheme, many others have looked at such ideas for waste since the 1970s that i have heard of, but never found the means of making the schemes economically viable.

I am not against reclaiming what we can from landfill - including oil. I am in favor of it, when we have solved the engineering and can get reasonably viable economics. At the moment we don't have this, so starting up businesses to do it is premature.

We need more research into the area, as there are many promising lines of approach starting to emerge.

As far as oil supply is concerned, a company at Chinchilla, Qld (I can't locate their name - it is lost in my "filing" system) claims that using insitu gasification of coal and the F-T process they have a break even point of $25/barrel for oil.

If this is right, they are now down to the point where it is cheaper than extracting the oil from most wells (which are increasingly dependent on secondary and tertiary recovery). The oil companies can no longer put them out of business by dropping prices, as they have done in the past to shale and tar sands producers.

Despite the screams of the greens, oil from coal is currently our cheapest potential source of large scale liquid fuel production.

As coal deposits pollute ground water anyway, the production of oil probably leaves the water table and surrounding area better off (environmentally as well as economically).

Fortunately, the days when you could start up a new process and pollute everything are gone. All we need now is for all engineers and business leaders to adopt the philosophy that pollution is actually wasted resources and a lost business opportunity (ie lock up the accountants and the "bottom liners") and we can start to get some real improvement in the environment as well as lasting, long term employment.

Enough raving, I suspect you, me and greendog are basically thinking along similar lines but expressing it differently.

Yeah now if they can hit a price point below about $35 to $45 a barrel, I believe it would be viable. However, you want to make sure they have included all costs for the operation into their costing estimates, such as replacement and maintenance, waste handling, regulatory compliance, environmental monitoring, and any mandated closure requirements. Also, they would need a reasonable operational life expectancy built in to spread the capital cost over. Some projection to costs increases over time for regulatory compliance, particularly since we are talking about a carbon fuel source and potential increases in taxation and regulation in the future.

I figure oil can be made for ~$17/barrel. If coal is the starting point figure you need a huge hydrogen supply but that can be done without polluting anything. The tarsand is not done right now but if the process was updated as I suggest for trash to oil it would be very clean and far less costly than it is at this time. There is a small company in ND,USA that makes methane the same way and that too could be updated and less costly. As for trash there are so many benefits from making oil and other raw materials it would take volumes to list them. BTW- you don't have to fill some low land to make a gulf course or a park. There is nothing good that can said in defence of landfills.

Actually hydrogen is energy intensive to produce and is derived from water, so if you make the hydrogen you need to dispose of the concentrated brine that remains from the process, this is a real permitting nightmare. Hydrogen is considered very dangerous to store in large quantities, so there is all the permitting and monitoring costs associated with that. You still have the issue of sorting the incoming waste stream and disposal of the segregated unusable wastes, plus disposal of the end waste from the oil processing. You have to have a backlog of waste materials stockpiled to use so you can work at a constant pace, efficiently, without waiting on trucks. So you have a waste storage facility to permit and operate. Mining Methane from waste disposal sites is a relatively passive activity that can be done for just the cost of the operation with minor permit modifications, as the landfill and everything else exists. There will be a lot of side issues and infrastructural needs that must be addressed. BTW there are things good that can be said in defence of landfills, but you may just lack the broader understanding or vision to see beyond your narrow pursuit of a new money making scheme. Landfills are better than burn dumps, the end product has a formalized closure that provides beneficial uses to the public, it functions as long term carbon sequestration for carbon based products from some of the oil and coal we mine, and they are relatively cheap.

Hi Pyro, The process I want developed does make money for sure. It also makes sense to eliminate landfills for many reasons. This process will do that and in fact it will put landfill to shame. There is no end waste that you are concerned about because only water are exhausted to the environment. Very little land is used-unlike landfill the trash is transformed on a day by day basis. Since all the products have value they can be routed as required for any raw material used in industry. Basically what is done in the process is a kind of rough-in refining of the waste matter on a molecular level. Waste is a mix of many molecules and I just want to sort them into useful molecules. The greatest bulk of waste is water and hydrocarbons which accounts for 80% of the mass so you want to get that 4/5s out and process the other 20% as required. You seem to be thinking on a small scale landfill whereas it really is a huge scale project. So, what won't work on one level works very well on another scale. And afterall there is a lot of good engineering that would have to be done prior to doing an actual trial. And then some research would have to be done to work out all the details you describe. First, there needs to be some interest is fixing the problem which is nonexistant at this time as far as I can tell.

No waste. So you have a theoretical 100% efficiency of converting garbage from the local communities into a hydrocarbon oil. Ok now I know you have no real concept of what you are doing at this point. What of the odd can, bottle, container, and other items that tend to get intermixed into the waste stream and not adequately removed? Have you ever seen even segregated municipal garbage at a recycling facility. It is not clean green waste materials, even when they do separation at the source. Besides that you can not convert green waste (or any biological waste) to a hydrocarbon with a 100% efficiency (even discounting the water content), and you must remember that any organic waste will contain more than just hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, and you are concentrating all the other components into the waste stream or off-gassing them to the atmosphere (and many of those that can be off-gassed are many orders of magnitude stronger green house gases than CO2). Now removal of water from waste is energy intensive so you wont want to remove water below about 50% by weight or maybe even 100% by weight, unless you count the energy cost of such removals into your cost point. Also, what do you do with any water that is extracted, as it will be highly contaminated, and the contaminates contained in that water? This will also cost money for treatment, disposal, storage, permitting, monitoring, etc... Oh and dont forget your EIR.

As far as landfills go, I actually have consulted on landfills that service huge metropolitan areas in California. They are not small by any means. The first thing you need to actually do is get research funding from a government energy agency to get a research level pilot study going to evaluate the actual costs. Then you can take any findings out to form a company to begin attempting to sell the product. However, as I work with people who develop and sell pyrolysis equipment and the facilities to municpalities, I know that it is extremely hard to finance and get going, and there are a ton of permitting hurdles that in these facilities cases end up costing you millions of $ to get through just to get to a point of final design. This means you would need to develop the product for applications in developing nations where permitting and regulations don't exist at the levels they would in England or the US (or certain smaller european countries). I think you will find a huge amount of hidden costs you have not considered, once you fully flesh out what permits you will need and your infrastructural support needs.

Hi RCE, I'm not trying to work out every detail-I know its very complex. But, surely you know the trash is mostly water and hydrocarbons-thats very general and just an estimate meant to show the value of this stuff. 100% of all trash is ~80% water and hydrocarbons is what I said. I never estimate efficiencies because that depends upon your value system. I know the landfill is a nightmare as you suggest. The bottles and cans, ect make up ~20% of the total mass so add 20+80=100 if that is what you mean. I have no need to store this stuff because its transformed into useful molecules on a day by day basis-trash is not stockpiled as it is in a landfill system-the trash is totally consumed into useful molecules bit by bit. Its just does not lay around stinking up the country side for miles around attracting rats, maggots and bacteria as is the case in all your landfills. No waste is good waste to store for centuries on end.

Waste recycling and pyrolysis is a way to save natural property.Through both can help us to make thing reusable.In this pyrolysis is done with chemical reaction or say as on high heating.As well as recycling is also a way to make used thing again reusable and it is done by recycle machine.