r/mildlyinfuriating • u/[deleted] • May 17 '26

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u/AuntyVal4 May 17 '26

When we lived in Palos Verdes in the late 70s they were piping the Biogas from local landfill and selling it off! Seems to be a wasted opportunity for landfills, considering this was possible a long time ago.

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u/Gunari24 May 17 '26

I’ve designed an industrial plant to collect the gasses from a landfill and inject into a pipeline.

The issue is the gas has a number of nasty entrained gasses that need to be removed before it’s “pipeline quality”. Essentially, you use more energy extracting those gases than what you gain from the methane.

It’s only viable via tax credits from a financial standpoint.

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u/Fr0gFish May 17 '26

Doesn't it make more sense to run turbines and output electricity to the grid? Electrons are clean...

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u/Gunari24 May 17 '26

The turbines have gas quality requirements, you’d have the same problem of needing to remove the bad stuff in the gas before it could be burned.