Land, Waste and Emergency Management Innovations
Year 2009 Innovations Pilots
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2009
- Focused on four priority areas:
- Greener Remediation
- Green Jobs
- Reduce Greenhouse Gases
- Green Labeling
- Seven projects were selected:
- Assessment of Gasification Technologies for Wet Wastes
- Automobiles and Product Stewardship: Issues and Opportunities for Material and Toxicity Neutral Personal Transportation
- Decision-Support Tool and Implementation Action Plans for Municipal Level Waste Management Practices to Reduce Greenhouse Gases
- Estimating Greenhouse Gas Reductions from Waste Prevention and Recycling: What to do when it’s not covered by WARM
- Microbial Fuel Cell Technology - In Site Bioremediation of Petroleum Contaminated Sites
- Renewable Energy Potential from Superfund Landfills
- Sustainable Products Movement: Opportunity to Advance Materials Management Principles for Resource Conservation and GHG benefits
- Awarded more than $336,000 to innovation projects
Assessment of Gasification Technologies for Wet Wastes
Sponsor: EPA Region 1 - Fiscal Year: 2009
Partners: Maine Department of Environmental Protection, National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL), City of Stamford
Overview: This project would identify gasification technologies suitable for processing wet sludge (specifically paper and wastewater sludge) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use, freeing up land and providing financial benefits to the communities/industries. A Gasification Technology Assessment Report will be issued to summarize the anticipated benefits and limitations of each gasification system, screen out systems with limited promise and identify significant information gaps necessary to property evaluate the gasification systems.
Automobiles and Product Stewardship: Issues and Opportunities for Material and Toxicity Neutral Personal Transportation
Sponsor: EPA Region 10 - Fiscal Year: 2009
Partners:Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR), Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation (OPEI), EPA Region 5, EPA Region 9, Region 10 States, Non-Goverment Organizations (NGO’s), Private Businesses, Universities
Overview: Across the U.S., about 450 million tons of vehicle waste is disposed in landfills each year, prompting this project to host discussions with the government to create incentives for material and toxicity neutral modes of personal transportation within the U.S. This project will also research, scope, identify and prioritize the issues and opportunities presented in their proposal by addressing the lifecycle material and toxicity impacts of automobiles on the environment.
Decision-Support Tool and Implementation Action Plans for Municipal Level Waste Management Practices to Reduce Greenhouse Gases
Sponsor: EPA Region 9 - Fiscal Year: 2009
Partners: City of Tracy, California Department of Conservation, Private Companies
Overview: The purpose of this project is to develop a support tool for a municipality to compare greenhouse gas reductions, economic feasibility, cost effectiveness and job creation associated with community waste management practices to have them meet aggressive sustainability goals. In addition, implementation plans will be developed for a specific set of waste management practices based on the results of the support tool targeting increased rates of recycling, source reduction or composting.
Estimating Greenhouse Gas Reductions from Waste Prevention and Recycling: What to do when it’s not covered by WARM
Sponsor: EPA Region 5 - Fiscal Year: 2009
Partners: EPA Region 9, States and Universities, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR), Local Government
Overview: While EPA’s Waste Reduction Model (WARM) helps to estimate the amount of greenhouse gas emission reductions in a waste reduction project, there are many materials and/or applications that are not included. This project seeks to find additional surrogate materials, develop clear lifecycle procedures for estimating GHG benefits for materials not included in WARM, host webinars to inform stakeholders of results and implement a process for identifying future materials and applications not included.
Microbial Fuel Cell Technology - In Site Bioremediation of Petroleum Contaminated Sites
Sponsor: EPA Region 8 - Fiscal Year: 2009
Partners: Montana DEQ and Northern Cheyenne Reservation, South Dakota DENR and Pine Ridge Reservation
Overview: This project will demonstrate the effectiveness of Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology on the in-situ bioremediation of petroleum contaminated sites at three Indian Country locations. The result of MFC bioremediation technology is very green with low energy requirements and a very small carbon footprint.
Project Highlights
- Identified two of the six evaluated landfills as viable candidates for methane capture for electricity.
- Landfills that have the following characteristics are better candidates for general energy recovery: more than two million tons of municipal solid waste; landfill waste is more than 80 feet deep; an impermeable cap and liner; an active gas collection system that continuously provides gas with a methane concentration of 40 percent or more; and wells that penetrate the full depth of the waste.
- Generating onsite electricity is more feasible at landfills with an electricity demand exceeding 50 kilowatts and where the local electricity price is high (above $0.14/kWh), or where electricity availability or reliability is inadequate.
- Sites that can generate 1 Megawatt or more of electricity through methane recovery may be good candidates for commercial electric projects. However, the electricity buy-back rate must be substantial, likely reflecting a premium for renewable electricity.
Renewable Energy Potential from Superfund Landfills
Sponsor: EPA Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation - Fiscal Year: 2009
Partners: Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office, Region 1, Landfill Methane Outreach Program
Challenge: In 2009, approximately 17 percent of total human-related methane emissions in the U.S. came from the decomposition of landfill waste; this includes waste from Superfund landfills. Methane has 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its concentration in the atmosphere has more than doubled over the last two centuries and continues to rise annually. To counteract the impacts of methane from landfills, EPA established the Landfill Methane Outreach Program, a voluntary assistance program that helps to reduce methane emissions from landfills by encouraging the recovery and beneficial use of landfill gas as an energy resource. One area that remained unexplored was recovering methane from closed landfills located on Superfund sites.
Opportunity: Due to increasing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and the need to identify innovative ways to supplement onsite energy needs, the Superfund program was interested in exploring the feasibility of implementing methane-to-energy systems on more National Priorities List (NPL) landfills. At the time, the program did not have baseline data on the energy generated from NPL landfills with methane-to-energy systems. Project managers needed a reliable and effective means for assessing whether the fuel energy value of the Superfund landfill gas could help offset site remediation costs or if gas could provide a revenue stream for the landfill.
Approach: Project partners assessed six NPL landfills for their ability to use methane to generate electricity for onsite use or for sale to the local utility; to replace natural gas consumption onsite; or for export to a nearby industry for fueling gas-fired technologies. Based on the assessments conducted at the six sites, project partners developed a four-step process for identifying landfills where energy recovery is feasible. Those four steps are: 1) estimate the quantity of gas that is available from the landfill, 2) evaluate the adequacy of the gas supply to meet either site energy needs or to provide a marketable energy product, 3) estimate the cost of producing energy from the landfill, and 4) evaluate options to improve project cost benefits. The four-step process became the foundation of the Landfill Gas Energy Project Assessment Tool, which aids Superfund managers in evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of recovering methane from Superfund landfills for use as an energy resource.
Project Updates: In June 2011, EPA posted the landfill gas energy final report and assessment tool online. Possible future follow-on activities include developing an implementation plan across all Superfund sites and expanding the universe of potential sites to include RCRA sites.
Additional Information:
- EPA Landfill Methane Outreach Program
- Landfill Gas Emissions Model (LandGEM)
- Superfund Landfill Methane-to-Energy Pilot Project Final Report (PDF) ( 143 pp, 7.5MB, about PDF)
Sustainable Products Movement: Opportunity to Advance Materials Management Principles for Resource Conservation and GHG benefits (see entry under 2008)