[nobodyknowin]

I really enjoyed my time working at a medium sized landfill as their surveyor and civil tech.

The engineering discussion in the article is spot on. We chose to reinject most of our leachate as that helps with CH4 production, and more CH4 for us meant more micro-turbines running generating us $$$ under our power purchase agreement with the local utility.

The well field balancing was crucial as well, we had to not only try to extract lots of methane, but not pull too hard or else that's how you get an underground fire. Big trouble if that happens.

And even the stockpile balancing was hard! You couldn't run out of dirt before your closure date, cause now you gotta start importing! Lots of volume calculations for me.

Fun stuff. If I was to go deeper into civil (I'm a licensed surveyor now) I'd likely consult for landfills. Big money and extremely interesting work.

[DylanSp]

What sort of substances end up in leachate, and how'd that contribute to greater CH4 production in your landfill? I was hoping that the OP post/video went into more detail on the chemistry involved.

[nobodyknowin]

It wasn't so much the substances, more the moisture.

A wet environment is much better for ch4 generation (was my understanding).

So we had an area that we called "the galleries" where we would rotate injecting the leachate. To keep all that stuff underneath wet (this is in southern ca, a pretty dry environment).

That was the concept anyway.

[DylanSp]

Got it, thanks!

[nobodyknowin]

Any time! I enjoyed the work, and I also got to work on closed sites which always made for pretty fun days as one was an isolated area and another was a golf course.