O/T & FYI: You may be confusing landfill gas or lagoon gas with concentrated anaerobic digester Biogas processed from known media in a controlled process. Bubbling landfill or lagoon gas up through an anaerobic plug-flow digester's digestate, when the latter is being processed with extremely tight temperature control, will allow special forms of intermediate acetoformer and methanoformer 'bugs' to develop in the brew and further process it. Some of the Superbrains at ISU haven't even found all the bugs that grow in there yet (..they're apparently transitory..), but they know they're there part of the time due to the results.
This methodology will ultimately produce large scale volumes of dependable and higher-quality Biogas after FEO2 (iron sponge) scrubbing to take out the sulfides. Chilling and reheat, or dessicant drying helps the gas quality also, and then molecular separators may be used to produce pure Methane for pipeline injection and split the CO2 off as a salable byproduct. In the $30MM+ plant range, that becomes a viable option.
The sulfides and some silicates, from what I understand, from landfill gas wreak havoc on both piston machines and gas-turbine generator prime movers. They acidify the component lubricants pretty quickly from what I'm told, in addition to working on any raw metals. Chemistry and Biochemistry are not my forte's, so I kind of have to keep relearning that part as I go along.
We have a sizable facility east of Des Moines adjacent to the major landfill with a number of gas fueled piston-type generators putting power on the local grid. Their maintenance is high and profits minimal because of the unwanted constituents in the landfill gas, and constantly changing BTU values of the gas itself as it is generated from the landfill. You really have no idea what's decomposing from one day to the next inside a landfill.
If they bubbled the landfill gas through the brew media of one of our high-tech plug-flow digesters first, then passed it through our scrubbers after it had blended with our 65%+/- Methane Biogas their heat rate stability and power production efficiency would improve considerably while their maintenance dropped accordingly. ...One day soon, we'll be working on a facility designed to do just that in very large scale.
I'd be interested in hearing more about your platinum catalyst application for the landfill gas. I'll do a little Googling in the mean time. The last time I dealt with a platinum catalyst in a process was at a Nitric Acid production facility at a big military ammo plant in WI. When not in constant use, the catalytic screen had to be kept in a bank vault in town; it was worth $1/2MM+ 20+ years ago.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, let's hope Sam and crew are starting to squeeze some bucks from some oil refinery sludge....
Surprises never cease.
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