Three Rivers Regional Landfill – A Cogeneration Solution for Evaporating Landfill Leachate
Challenges
Three Rivers, like many landfills, had a long-standing relationship with its local publicly Owned Treatment Works (“POTW”) which had been accepting 12,000 to 24,000 GPD of its landfill leachate for many years.
Unfortunately, transport and disposal (“T&D”) costs were consistently rising and Three Rivers was paying over $0.09/gallon for off-site leachate disposal. Adding to Three Rivers concerns was talk that the local POTW may discontinue accepting leachate and the T&D cost for the next closest disposal outlet would be over $0.20/gallon.
Faced with rising costs and the threat of a steep change that could double or triple its costs without warning, Three Rivers took proactive steps to ‘control its own destiny.’
Solution
Three Rivers selected the lowest total life-cycle cost option that met its requirements, which was the Heartland Concentrator in a 25,000 gpd Hybrid CoVAP configuration.
Hybrid CoVAP™ Configuration
CoVAP™ stands for Cogeneration for Industrial Evaporation. A Hybrid CoVAP™ configuration combines cogeneration with additional heat from a landfill gas flare. This configuration is particularly valuable when you want to use the thermal energy from cogeneration beneficially but there is insufficient heat to evaporate all your leachate.
The Hybrid CoVAP solution provided clear economic benefit to Three Rivers by allowing Three Rivers to run at full capacity while using less LFG. This capability maximizes the value of landfill gas by always running the energy plant and never having to compromise between generating renewable energy and evaporating leachate.
Q&A with Jon McDonald, Three Rivers Regional Landfill leachate treatment plant operator.
