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Reasonably steady gas flows are an important component of a gas treatment operation.
AT the Greenwood Farms Landfill in Tyler. Texas, methane gas previously flared is now collected, upgraded and injected into natural gas pipelines. The facility, officially opened in early June, is collecting and treating 1,200-scf/minute of landfill gas to produce 800,000-scf/day of methane. Gas for the system is collected from 60 wells, averaging 80 feet deep, over a 60-acre area.
Southtex Renewables in Midland, Texas, designed, built, owns and operates the gas treatment facility at Tyler and three other landfill gas plants around the country. The company is part of Southtex, a 25-year old company that is one of the largest manufacturers of gas treatment plants in the country.
As with biogas from an anaerobic digester, cleanup of landfill gas requires the removal of hydrogen sulfide (H^sub 2^S), water and carbon dioxide (CO2). "Landfills actually have more CO2 than digesters," explains Luke Morrow, president of Southtex Renewables. Unlike digester gas, treatment systems for landfill gas need to remove nitrogen and oxygen as well. "In a landfill, you are going to pull 40 to 60 inches of water vacuum on PVC wells that are put down into the landfill," he says. "So there is a potential to pull air through the system, which is made up of nitrogen and oxygen." Other...