Every time I drive California’s Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Barbara and Ventura, I pass by an open flare near La Conchita—the small bedroom community that gets buried by mudslides from time-to-time—and think to myself, “What a waste of perfectly good energy. The gas being flared is a byproduct of on- and offshore oil recovery operations that abound in the area and I haven’t the slightest clue just how much gas is involved, but it bothers me, nonetheless. So does the idea of flaring off landfill gas if there’s something better than can be done with it.
Yes, recovering and putting landfill gas to use is an expensive proposition. Not only does it require a significant capital investment, but a lot of painful bother goes down the drain meeting all the regulatory hogwash, so it’s little wonder size and the amount of waste-in-place make a huge difference in a project’s attractiveness.
As more and more projects see the light of day, however, developers are able to expand their horizons as to what constitute viable returns on investment. A case in point, presented at LMOP 2010, is the Jackson County [Dillsboro, NC] Green Energy Park, which uses a very small amount of LFG to bring to life a brace of small businesses that otherwise might never see the light of day themselves. For more on the project, you can go here to see just what 40 CFM can get you.