By Chris Hagan
Review Staff Writer
For most, a typical interaction with a waste collection service stops at the curb.
Trash is taken to the end of the driveway and upon returning home from work, the cans are empty, turned over, and the waste is resting comfortably atop a hill.
For Orion Township and Waste Management, that large hill is Eagle Valley.
It’s the waste that is creating useable fuel and will continue to do so for the next half-century.
What is it?
It’s often called simply landfill gas and it’s an amalgam of methane and carbon dioxide making up the majority. There’s also a small component of what Waste Management calls ‘nuisance constituents? and those are things like sulfur compounds which give the gas an odor.
The cycle begins with the collection of residential and commercial waste. Recyclables are separated, and the remaining waste is then transported to Waste Management landfills for permanent disposal. Much of this waste, including food, paper and cardboard that are not otherwise diverted, is organic in nature. Bacteria digest this organic waste and produce those gases as natural byproducts.
The collected gas is recovered through series of wells drilled into the landfill. These wells are connected by a common pipe system that collects the gas and transports it to a nearby compression facility. There, landfill gas is de-watered, filtered and pressurized.
According to Kathleen Klein, who’s the local community relations representative for Waste Management, the Eagle Valley gas is sent and sold to General Motors for their Orion Assembly Plant. The rest of the usable gas is piped to a two-engine electricity generating plant.
‘These are like big car engines and instead of gasoline or diesel being the fuel that creates the spark that makes the pistons go up and down, we use the landfill gas,? Klein said. ‘The pistons spin a generator and that’s what creates electricity and we sell that electricity to DTE and it goes on their grid.?
Waste Management had to build a new facility that handles the filtering and pressurizing of the gas due to Eagle Valley’s approved expansion. The original facility was in the way of their projected expansion moving westward so they had to lay piping underneath the railroad tracks to the current site off Giddings Road.
Some may recall seeing the original large, rusted smoke-stack like structures from Silver Bell with large flames coming out. Those flames are a result of a burn off flare that is federally mandated.
The flare is necessary to burn off unnecessary, incremental remaining landfill gas,? Klein said. ‘We try to send as much landfill gas to renewable energy plants when we have one available or to a manufacturer, like GM, but there’s almost always more landfill gas but not enough to install another engine.?
The new ‘burn-off? stacks will have the combustion happen inside and will not be visible.
How much gas will Eagle Valley produce?
The current projections are that Eagle Valley will have another 30 years of landfill operation and that number could increase if people began recycling more often. Klein says there’s typically a 20 to 30-year curve where the gas production will peak and then drop off.
Meaning that as the waste in landfills age, they’ll produce the most usable gas around 11 years but then as time moves on that gas produced by the waste begins to fall.
Eagle Valley began accepting waste in 1985 and the original waste is now on the end of that gas producing curve, but as more waste is added it’s also adding years of gas production.
Eagle Valley is one of three landfills in Michigan supplying electricity to DTE with the other two in Three Rivers and Lenox.
Waste Management also sells their landfill gas from a Grand Rapids-area landfill to a soy bean processor while another landfill sells their gas to a third party collector who supplies it to Ford Motor Company in Wayne, Mich.
General Motors
Waste Management has been supplying General Motors with landfill gas since 1999. In 2014, the gas began powering five Caterpillar landfill gas engines which produce two-thirds of plant’s energy.
GM also receives landfill gas from Republic’s Oakland Heights landfill on Brown Road. Together, they produce 8-megawatts of electricity which is enough to power 3,000 homes according to DTE.
GM Orion is only one of two General Motors plants in the world using landfill gas, the other in Fort Wayne. It also has an extensive solar panel field that generates 350-kilowatts of electricity, enough to power 150 homes.
‘When you look at that and how quickly that adds up for us, it really is huge,? Orion’s plant communications manager Christopher Bonelli said. ‘Of course when it comes to the benefit of environmental sustainability and GM being an industry leader in sustainability of renewable energy it is just a really smart way to run the business.?
Future of landfill Gas and Eagle Valley
If a business or entity wants to capture remaining landfill gas, both Waste Management and that interested party both have to come to negotiations and assess financial involvement.
Rather than having to pay large sums of money to install engines, piping and larger power plants, Klein was asked about the possibility of smaller businesses, which could be equipped to utilize landfill gas, and may have storage cylinders on site similar to a propane tank.
Although she had never heard of that being used, she spoke of projects out in California where Waste Management partnered with another company to convert landfill gas for trucks, eventually winning an EPA award.
But despite the potential, Klein said there must be an incentive for both sides.
‘There are always opportunities but it comes down to the business side of it meaning is there enough to pay for the conversion,? she said. ‘Is it going to be cheaper than compressed natural gas to make it a usable fuel or will it be too costly to install the devices needed to make that happen??
As far as Eagle Valley, she says any landfill owner/operator is required to maintain a site for 30 years after closure. Typically five to ten years out from meeting their projected air space permit is when that owner/operator begins working with the community. Then it is determined what the community would like to see the facility used for after closure.