Waste to Energy — An Overview

See peswiki.com The saying, "One man’s trash is another man's treasure" is coming true in the waste-to-energy field. With some landfills overflowing, much real estate at a premium, groundwater and air pollution concerns, and fossil fuel scarcity concerns; methods of turning refuse into fuel or electricity are attractive for many reasons. Who would have ever thought that junk and sewage could be cost-effectively turned into a valuable commodity? It turns out that there are several approaches being developed — and even some already in commercial operation -- that, with tipping fees, can turn a profit from turning garbage and sewage into electricity and fuel. According to their Vice President, Lynn Brown, Waste Management, the company the comes around to haul off garbage, is increasingly turning some of that garbage into energy -- enough to power over one million homes -- the equivalent of 14 million barrels of oil per year or 3.6 million tons of coal. And the company has a goal to double that amount to 2 million homes by 2020. (www.wm.com Some landfills now capture the methane that comes out of the buried trash, which used to escape into the atmosphere as a potent greenhouse gas. Instead, they now burn this methane to run generators. Solar Hydrogen Energy Corporation (SHEC Labs) has developed a process that uses solar energy to convert this methane into hydrogen, and expect that within 5 years they will compete with the cheapest sources of Hydrogen. ( peswiki.com ) One ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 3m 1s Date Found: Fri, Feb 01 2008 1:29 PM Category: Science Date Produced: View Count: 6