Why dump stuff in landfills and wait for it to be transformed to methane?

Question

Why not transform all the trash being generated into raw material rather than using landfills at all? It would be a lot more profitable to do the job rather than waiting for 50 years for nature to do it.

Answer 1

I am glad you asked... I was working on a Staaten Island landfill project in New York many decades ago. We drilled holes in the sanitary landfill (sanitary means the layer of trash needs to be covered with a layer of soil every night) to recover methane gas. Not a perfect solution but better than none. The answer to your question is money. There are a bunch of perfectly viable refuse-to-fuel schemes, which bypass landfill, but nobody is willing to pay for them. You see, it takes money to convert trash to energy, until we decide it is the way to go landfills will be around for a long time.
Let me tell you about the plan for New York, the city produces 25,000 tons of garbage each and every day...a lot of it is being dumped off the continental shelf, sometimes the sea refuses to swallow the stuff and barfs it back on Long Island beaches....the process to convert it to fuel called for sorting (separation of stuff which spoils) and using the combustible (paper, wood, plastics) fraction for fuel manufacture. The problem was the so called tipping fee, which is how much the city was willing to pay to have the truckfull of trash delivered and sorted.
Untill we decide this is the way to go, refuse-derived fuel is a pipe dream.
thank you for asking...

Answer 2

I saw a recent statistic that if you piled all the garbage the US generated in 100 years 100 feet high, it would make a square with sides about 20 miles long which is really quite short when you listen to all the hype about running out of space. It is always interesting to me that methane on Titan is abiogenic but methane on Earth is always biogenic. Obviously someone has a wrong theory. The fact is that methane outgasses at a much higher rate over a much wider area than scientists would have ever guessed and almost all of it is natural.

Answer 3

In the same way a feed lot stinks, a landfill goes septic.
In the same way a pasture gets richer and greener with a balanced number of grazing animals living off it, a large amount of "garbage" can be composted by blending it with 2 to 3 parts dirt and you never notice anything except greener fields!
If we shred it and compost it , the natural recycling process will occur so cleanly that we could green up the whole Arizona desert with just the trash from San-Angeles, Tucson, and Phoenix.

Answer 4

Methane is a potent greenhouse chemical and pollutant. And quite likely to explode if it gets air and heat to it.

In at least one place in Utah, cars have to slow down on warm calm days because of the methane pollution of all the cattle in the valley. And as others noted, fermentation takes time so enclosed tanks would be huge and expensive, and you still have all the things that the bacteria will not turn to gasses and organic (and usually smelly) liquids to get outta the fermenter and dispose of.

Let's air ship it to India and let them sort thru for valuables and use the rest for needed fertilizer! *just teasing*

Answer 5

something comparable is already being utilized in Italy the place they take sewer gas and eliminate CO2 and different unusable gases by using a chemical technique. they do no longer seem to be as fortunate as we . it works. there replaced right into a concept off the coast the stress interior the sea floor is intense sufficient to leak methane with a splash oil. it may value too lots. lots greater effortless to drill and launch the stress.

Answer 6

Sounds like you have found a business opportunity. Go out and set up a company to do that. If it really works, you can make money. But I suspect it is not economical, otherwise there would already be greedy people building such facilities. Maybe even oil companies would want in on it.

Answer 7

its still takes space to ferment the stuff, and it will still take time because similar organisms are what is doing the job.