Landfill gas study performance on a IC Engine with addition of Syngas

In this research, Chapter 1 is dedicated to analytical evaluation of landfill gas recovery. The majority of the world's municipal solid waste in is still going to the landfills, US being no exception. According to BioCycle and Earth Engineering Center, about 270 million tons of waste are landfilled annually in US. Anaerobic degradation, a naturally occurring process on the landfills, generates landfill gas which mainly consists of methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas that can be captured and used in a variety of applications. When methane from the landfill is collected and used it not only prevents the gas from escaping into the atmosphere, but also displaces the Carbon Dioxide emissions from the fossil fuels that would otherwise have been used. Methane can be used directly as gas or used to generate electricity and be sold to the grid. Electricity generation makes up about three–fourths of currently operational landfill gas capture projects in the United States. Besides the revenue from electricity sale, creation of new jobs associated with the design, construction, and operation as well as air quality improvement are other benefits of landfill gas utilization. While there are lots of environmental and economic advantages, from a technical point of view, utilization of landfill gas for energy presents technical challenges due to low and fluctuating energy content which results in flame instability. One of the methods of catalytic reforming of portion of landfill gas and an experiment conducted to validate it are described in Chapter 2 of this research. A mixture of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide (syngas) was injected at the different ratios to the stream of landfill gas and the resulting gas mixture was then introduced to an internal combustion engine. Results were measured in terms of exhaust emissions and engine performance at different ratios of landfill gas and syngas. 3 Despite the difficulties with laboratory equipment, this experiment proved that the addition of syngas to Landfill gas changes characteristics of combustion process and results in increased reactivity of the fuel mixture and decreased exhaust emissions. Review of waste management in Russia and in Moscow: In Appendix D of this report (p.41 et seq.), the author reviews briefly the current state of waste management in Russia and the means of disposal of municipal solid waste in the metropolitan area of Moscow. The current annual world Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation, estimated by D-Waste is …