Company will use landfill gas from its Fairmont City, Illinois, location.
Waste Management, Houston, has opened a renewable natural gas facility that uses pipeline-ready natural gas from landfill gas produced at the company’s Milam Landfill in Fairmont City, Illinois.
Starting in early December, the processed renewable natural gas will be injected into Ameren Illinois’ pipeline for withdrawal at other locations, including some Waste Management facilities. Ameren Illinois is a regulated electric and gas delivery company based in Collinsville, Illinois. The natural gas produced will be used to heat homes or fuel truck fleets and other equipment that run on compressed natural gas (CNG).
The newly opened facility is designed to process about 3,500 standard cubic feet per minute (SCFM) of incoming landfill gas, which will be enough to fuel about 200 Waste Management CNG collection trucks per day. The gas produced represents more than 5 percent of the natural gas that is used in Waste Management’s entire CNG fleet per day.
“The Milam Renewable Natural Gas Facility is the first facility of its kind we’ve actually built from the ground up,” says Jim Trevathan, executive vice president and COO for Waste Management. “This innovative facility utilizes renewable landfill gas, and purifies it to a high-quality natural gas that in turn feeds into the adjacent pipeline to fuel our growing fleet of CNG trucks. This truly maximizes available resources while creating a new and beneficial use.”
"At Ameren Illinois, we are investing in new technology upgrades to our natural gas delivery system, so when we were approached by Waste Management for this first-of-its-kind collaboration, it made perfect sense to us," says Richard Mark, president and CEO of Ameren Illinois.
The existing Milam Landfill-Gas-to-Energy facility produces 2.4 megawatts of renewable energy. The output from the power plant is directly connected to the new renewable natural gas facility, which provides the power needed to run the new facility.
The $19 million Renewable Gas Facility was partially funded by a $2.4 million grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the Illinois Energy Office.
The Milam renewable natural gas facility is the company’s third plant to convert landfill gas to natural gas. In California, Waste Management collaborated in what it says is the world’s largest plant to convert landfill gas to ultra-low-carbon liquefied natural gas (LNG). The facility produces up to 13,000 gallons of LNG per day and helps to power the company’s fleet in California. In Ohio, Waste Management processes about 3,000 SCFM of landfill gas and delivers it to a natural gas pipeline.
