Elimination of Methane from Landfill Gas

75239S Municipal solid waste landfills are the single largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the United States, producing 7 million tons, or 34% of the nation's total methane pollution. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control¿s third assessment report, methane has a global warming potential 21 times that of carbon dioxide and is a key contributor to global climate change. This project will develop technology for capturing methane emissions from landfills and converting nearly 100% of these emissions into a high quality synthetic diesel fuel, using a commercially viable gas-to-liquids (GTL) process. This proprietary GTL technology, now being used in oil and natural gas fields, will be adapted for use with municipal solid waste landfills. During Phase I, a GTL processing unit with a 25,000 scf/day capacity was built; a catalyst manufacturing process was designed; a proprietary catalyst was produced for the project; and a field test was performed at a rural stranded gas well. The test demonstratead that a synthetic diesel fuel could be made directly from wellgas methane. During Phase II, additional gas stream clean-up technology will be developed and incorporated to remove corosives and catalyst poisons, in order to make a relatively pure methane/carbon dioxide gas stream for the GTL unit. Finally, the system will be evaluated to determine if the technology can be commercially applied to landfill gas, and if so, at what range of processing volumes. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The technology should be applicable to the servicing of a considerable portion of the 2,000 active landfills in the US, as well as a significant number of the 4,000 closed sites. The initial target market will be landfills with much smaller gas streams than can sustain electrical generation, liquified natural gas, or other technologies. The landfills would benefit from a new revenue source (sales of the waste gas stream and use of a non-sulfur synthetic diesel). Methane emissions would be significantly reduced, and the resulting synthetic diesel would provide a high-centane, sulfur-free, fuel that would burn with lower NOx and particulate emissions, compared to conventional diesel fuels.