Trash-made Gas Powers Generators

WOODBINE – From deep within a 100-foot mountain of decaying trash at the Cape May County Sanitary Landfill methane gas is produced at rate of 1,100 cubic feet per minute.
Instead of smelling up the area, and polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gas, Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority spent $5 million on a project that used from 50-100 MUA workers and resulted in a facility capable of producing electricity from that will supply power to the 147-acre landfill facility and be connected to the Pennsylvania Jersey Maryland (PJM) interconnect to bolster “the grid.”
At a Dec. 11 ceremony adjacent to the new plant, just down the road from the landfill, MUA Executive Director Charles M. Norkis and MUA Chairman George Betts were joined by Freeholder Will Morey, Veronica Town, senior Atlantic City Electric public affairs manager, Stephen Boyle, of PJM Interconnection and Ron Williamson, of Northeast Energy Systems to cut the ribbon at the facility.
The plant contains three Jenbacher electrical generators. Two run continuously to produce electricity from the rotting trash in the landfill’s six cells, each 15-18 acres in size with a seventh in its beginning stages. The third is kept ready to power up should one fail, or when routine maintenance is performed.
The power generated by those could, according to Norkis, power all the homes in Woodbine, West Wildwood or Cape May Point. Linked with the PJM Interconnect via Atlantic City Electric lines, any excess not needed at the site can be sold on that grid.
The new plant is not the first such facility at the landfill. Two 150-kilowatt generators were placed into service in 2005 and help to power the landfill, which uses an estimated $250,000 annually in electricity.
Norkis said the MUA sells between $40,000 and $60,000 in electricity to Atlantic City Electric.
“Landfill gas burns cleaner than fuel oil,” Norkis told the assembled crowd.
The plant was entirely an in-house” project from the start, he said. That meant all the engineering, securing of permits, which took over two years, as well as design and labor was done by authority workers. Some of those were assigned from wastewater treatment plants to weld over 1,000 feet of pipes.
“The cost saving was tremendous,” Norkis said of the project. “It will pay for itself in five years,” he said.
Assisting the authority in funding were grants from the Board of Public Utilities of $256,320 and the Department of Environmental Protection’s Landfill Fund.
He cited cooperation with Atlantic City Electric, which was needed to tie into the grid via its network.
While the facility produced electric, if power fails, it must cease operation, he said. That way, no utility worker could be injured by coming in contact with an energized line.
Boyle said the PJM is a high voltage grid that services 61 million customers through its region. Not all are large plants, such as Salem and Oak Creek, or vast solar farms generating 700 megawatts of power. He said PJM incorporated many different producers from 185,000 commercial generators, and none are favored over another.
Williamson termed the Jenbacher, 1-megawatt generators as “spark-ignited engines” rated at 1400 horsepower “running uphill 24/7, 365 days a year.” The three on-site generators run on methane, but similar ones could be fueled by wood or other fuels, he noted.
Town said the project began in 2009 to add the generators. “We are very pleased with the progress of the MUA and PJM,” she said. “It was a very long road,” she added.
Morey alluded to the high level of sound that made hearing difficult.
“That is not noise, that is innovation,” said Morey, who is liaison to economic development in the county. He added that the sound meant the waste gas was being turned into a resource.
“Thank you on behalf of the taxpayers,” Morey told Betts.
Betts noted several years when the MUA did not receive any revenue from gas. Now that will change, he said.
The MUA sends about 300 cubic feet per minute of gas to Woodbine Developmental Center to produce steam for heating and cooling at that facility about a mile from the landfill.
The MUA landfill is one of 13 in the state, has been in operation since 1990, and has permits that will allow it to be used for another 90 years. While that may seem an eternity, if recycling was not maximized, Norkis said that useful life might be reduced by 35-40 percent. Thus, he underscored the authority’s commitment to continue to recycling.