Looking for non-burn technologies for handling "methane" gases from landfills

[Mike Ewall <catalyst@envirolink.org>]

At 08:29 PM 11/30/98 -0500, you wrote:
>At 15:18 11/30/1998 -0500, you wrote:
>>Does anyone know about any alternatives to the flaring or incineration of
>>landfill gases?  Also, is anyone aware of emissions testing data for
>>dioxins and furans coming from flaring or incineration of landfill gases?
>
>Not sure of the intended scope of your question.

Everyone,

I'm working on an article to expose how the "Green Energy" corporations may
be creating a market for new incinerators based on what is defined as
"biomass" under the "Green-e" standards.  The folks that decided that
incineration of landfill gases is "Green" don't seem to think that there
are any problems with this practice.

They use the term "landfill gas" interchangeably with the word "methane"
even though landfill gas is only about 50% methane (another approx 50% is
carbon dioxide and less than 1% is full of dozens of toxic "non-methane
organic compounds").

I'm looking for:

1) any information on non-burn technologies for treating landfill gases
(are there any places filtering out the non-methane organics and using
non-burn methods for making methane into something that's not an explosive
greenhouse gas?);

2) any data on dioxin or other toxic emissions from landfill gas
incineration (not flaring, but 'controlled' incineration of the type that
would be used to generate electricity).


>From what I can tell so far, there is no data available for question #2.  I
hope someone on this list can prove me wrong.  I also haven't heard of a
single living example (or even a proposal for) non-burn methane management
of the sort I'm asking about in question #1.

Mike Ewall
Pennsylvania Environmental Network
http://www.penweb.org