Full Scale Bioreactor Landfill for Carbon Sequestration and Greenhouse Emission Control

The Yolo County Department of Planning and Public Works constructed a full-scale bioreactor landfill as a part of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Project XL program to develop innovative approaches for carbon sequestration and greenhouse emission control. The overall objective was to manage landfill solid waste for rapid waste decomposition and maximum landfill gas generation and capture for carbon sequestration and greenhouse emission control. Waste decomposition is accelerated by improving conditions for either the aerobic or anaerobic biological processes and involves circulating controlled quantities of liquid (leachate, groundwater, gray water, etc.), and, in the aerobic process, large volumes of air. The first phase of the project entailed the construction of a 12-acre module that contained a 6-acre anaerobic cell, a 3.5-acre anaerobic cell, and a 2.5-acre aerobic cell at the Yolo County Central Landfill near Davis, California. The cells were highly instrumented to monitor bioreactor performance. Liquid addition commenced in the 3.5-acre anaerobic cell and the 6-acre anaerobic cell. Construction of the 2.5-acre aerobic cell and biofilter has been completed. The current project status and preliminary monitoring results are summarized in this report

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 15, No. 1

• The Year of the Rupjonjim • Pennsylvania Summer-Houses and Summer-Kitchens • Religious and Educational References in Lancaster County Wills • Genealogy and Folk-Culture • Pennsylvania German Folktales: An Annotated Bibliography • Italian Immigrant Life in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, 1890-1915 Part IIhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1021/thumbnail.jp

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 19, No. 3

• Cooking in Red and White • Trade Cards, Catalogs, and Invoice Heads • The Encyclopaedia Cinematographica and Folklife Studies • The Cheese was Good • Notes and Documents: Eighteenth-Century Letters from Germany • The Ephrata Wall-Charts and Their Inscriptions • Itinerants - Peddlers, Drovers, Wagoners, Gypsies, Tramps: Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 15 • Engravings of Pennsylvania Millshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1039/thumbnail.jp

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 9, No. 1

• Half-Timbering in American Architecture • The Strouse Dance • Schuylkill Boatmen and Their Ways • Some Early Phases of the Philadelphia Mummers\u27 Parade • Fantasticals • Joseph Henry Dubbs as a Folklorist • About the Authors • Horse Companies in Montgomery County • Books Not for Burninghttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1000/thumbnail.jp

LANDFILL OPERATION FOR CARBON SEQUESTRATION AND MAXIMUM METHANE EMISSION CONTROL

Controlled landfilling is an approach to manage solid waste landfills, so as to rapidly complete methane generation, while maximizing gas capture and minimizing the usual emissions of methane to the atmosphere. With controlled landfilling, methane generation is accelerated to more rapid and earlier completion to full potential by improving conditions (principally moisture, but also temperature) to optimize biological processes occurring within the landfill. Gas is contained through use of surface membrane cover. Gas is captured via porous layers, under the cover, operated at slight vacuum. A field demonstration project has been ongoing under NETL sponsorship for the past several years near Davis, CA. Results have been extremely encouraging. Two major benefits of the technology are reduction of landfill methane emissions to minuscule levels, and the recovery of greater amounts of landfill methane energy in much shorter times, more predictably, than with conventional landfill practice. With the large amount of US landfill methane generated, and greenhouse potency of methane, better landfill methane control can play a substantial role both in reduction of US greenhouse gas emissions and in US renewable energy. The work described in this report, to demonstrate and advance this technology, has used two demonstration-scale cells of size (8000 metric tons [tonnes]), sufficient to replicate many heat and compaction characteristics of larger ''full-scale'' landfills. An enhanced demonstration cell has received moisture supplementation to field capacity. This is the maximum moisture waste can hold while still limiting liquid drainage rate to minimal and safely manageable levels. The enhanced landfill module was compared to a parallel control landfill module receiving no moisture additions. Gas recovery has continued for a period of over 4 years. It is quite encouraging that the enhanced cell methane recovery has been close to 10-fold that experienced with conventional landfills. This is the highest methane recovery rate per unit waste, and thus progress toward stabilization, documented anywhere for such a large waste mass. This high recovery rate is attributed to moisture, and elevated temperature attained inexpensively during startup. Economic analyses performed under Phase I of this NETL contract indicate ''greenhouse cost effectiveness'' to be excellent. Other benefits include substantial waste volume loss (over 30%) which translates to extended landfill life. Other environmental benefits include rapidly improved quality and stabilization (lowered pollutant levels) in liquid leachate which drains from the waste

Infrared Thermal Mapping of the Martian Surface and Atmosphere: First Results

The Viking infrared thermal mapper measures the thermal emission of the martian surface and atmosphere and the total reflected sunlight. With the high resolution and dense coverage being achieved, planetwide thermal structure is apparent at large and small scales. The thermal behavior of the best-observed areas, the landing sites, cannot be explained by simple homogeneous models. The data contain clear indications for the relevance of additional factors such as detailed surface texture and the occurrence of clouds. Areas in the polar night have temperatures distinctly lower than the CO_2 condensation point at the surface pressure. This observation implies that the annual atmospheric condensation is less than previously assumed and that either thick CO_2 clouds exist at the 20-kilometer level or that the polar atmosphere is locally enriched by noncondensable gases