Humans produce a lot of waste, not only the stuff that goes in the toilet, but all kinds of garbage. Most of it, including poopy disposable diapers, gets tossed into landfills. While in recent years people in many countries have been encouraged to recycle as much of their garbage as they can, landfills remain the third-largest methane producer that is human-related. The biogas even has its own name, LFG, for landfill gas. The buried debris creates its own anaerobic digester.
LFG can be captured and used as an energy source. There are about 2,400 solid waste landfills in the U.S. database, both active and closed sites. In March of 2015, almost 600 of those sites were operating one or more LFG energy capturing systems. The majority of the energy …show more content…
There is the abundant supply and it's renewable, so we'll always have plenty of it in the future. Producing power from our garbage and sewage is a good way to deal with the billions of tons of waste that humans and their activities create and dispose of, often improperly.
Most agree that burning the methane and turning it into CO2 and water is not as bad as allowing it to escape into the atmosphere. Making use of the methane as it burns is an even better idea. Plus, there is the extra bonus the valuable nutrients created during the process.
Farmers in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world have become completely energy independent thanks to recycling the farm's manure and crop wastes, turning it into biogas for their operations. Many farms produce enough to share with neighbors, and/or sell to local power companies and fuel suppliers. In many areas, there are incentives to encourage people to install biogas plants. Biogas is also proving to be one answer to getting power into areas that otherwise have to rely on fossil fuels. It can be a low-cost process, even something a family or community can build using recycled or repurposed …show more content…
Climate change is the term used to describe changes in the weather patterns on Earth. There are many factors that can contribute to climate change, some of them naturally occurring, such as volcanic activity. However most scientists link climate change to human activities, especially our large-scale use of fossil fuels and the waste produced by our gigantic livestock industry. Biogas by its nature lessens the emissions that contribute to climate change. The CO2 released when burning biogas is nearly matched by the organic materials that were used to create it. Plants use CO2 from the atmosphere in order to grow. This would include the grasses and grains fed to cattle and other livestock, and all those vegetables, grains and fruit your parents made you eat. This means that unlike fossil fuels, biogas is pretty much carbon-neutral.
But biogas is not a perfect renewable energy resource. The processes often require water, and although water can often be recaptured, in areas where it is precious or unavailable, many systems can't be used. Harvesting the biogas from landfills means that toxic waste that could be present must be addressed, causing additional processes and expense. Installing operational anaerobic digesters into the places most in need requires money, materials and skilled labor, often which are not easy to come