The sweet smell of success: GE's landfill gas win

One of the largest landfill gas energy projects in California is now underway, with GE’s Jenbacher engines powering the project. Located in Half Moon Bay near San Francisco, the engines at the Ox Mountain Landfill will provide enough renewable power to support 7,500 to 10,000 U.S. homes in the cities of Palo Alto and Alameda. The plant is twice as powerful as other landfill gas projects in northern California.

California dreaming: The Ox Mountain project is also serving as a model for GE’s pre-combustion gas-cleaning technology. Called “Temperature Swing Adsorber,” the system can remove harmful contaminants before they can damage gas engine components, making larger landfill gas projects economically more viable. The TSA system’s introduction helps the renewable energy industry address one of the key technical challenges preventing the development of more large-scale U.S. landfill biogas projects.

Inside the plant, six of GE Energy’s Jenbacher generator sets are using the landfill’s methane-rich gas to generate renewable electricity 24 hours a day. A portion of the electricity is being used to support the landfill’s onsite operations, while surplus power is sold. The new biogas project reduces the need to purchase energy from traditional fossil fuel power plants. And by capturing and using landfill gas to generate electricity, less of the gas needs to be flared into the atmosphere.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program, the country’s existing landfill gas projects have helped eliminate the combined equivalent of CO2 emissions generated by 14.3 million automobiles.

Having a gas: The Ox Mountain plant is one of about 540 new “candidate” U.S. projects identified by the EPA’s program.

* Read the announcement
* Read about Jenbacher engines and waste-heat recovery
* Learn about other GE ecomagination technologies
* Read about Jenbachers converting cow, chicken and pig waste into electricity
* Learn more about GE’s Jenbacher engines
* Learn details about the biogas production process
* Take a video tour inside a Jenbacher plant