Will County turning trash into fuel and revenue

Will County will put methane gas generated at its Prairie View Landfill to good use at the rate of an expected $15 million a year.

A recently completed renewable natural gas plant at the Wilmington landfill is expected to start operating in a few weeks, converting methane gas into high-quality natural gas that will be sold in the marketplace primarily as a cleaner fuel for trucks and buses.

It’s the second such natural gas plant connected to a landfill in Illinois and the first in the Chicago area, county officials said.

“We’re setting a standard here in Will County,” Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant said Friday at a ceremony celebrating the completion of the plant.

The plant is expected to generate $15 million a year for the county in its early years and likely more in the future as capacity is expanded.

“We like to call this a green project because of the amount of revenue it will bring to the county, but we can’t lose sight of the environmental impact on the community,” Bertino-Tarrant said.

The renewable natural gas plant project cost $60 million to build, including a 5.5-mile pipeline that will carry the gas to market.

Revenue from the plant will be used to pay construction costs for 12 years, said David Hartke, the plant project manager for the county. The county also plans to use $2 million to $5 million a year from the revenue for operations and projects.

Methane gas is one of the major pollutants from landfills and typically was burned off into the atmosphere in the past. But that has changed with technology capable of capturing the gas and putting it to productive use.

The renewable natural gas plant is not the first facility at the Wilmington landfill to use methane gas.

Landfill operator Waste Management has had an energy station at the landfill that captured methane gas that was sold to utilities.

The county, which owns the landfill property, received about $500,000 a year from the energy station, Hartke said. The difference is that the county owns the renewable natural gas plant.

“In this situation, the county will get all of the net revenue,” Hartke said.

The gas plant will be operated by SCS Energy, a California-based company that also designed the facility.

SCS Energy has 45 other energy projects around the country, including plants that use methane at landfills to generate natural gas, said Darren Nightingale, project manager for the company.

“It’s definitely the wave of the future,” Nightingale said.

Nightingale led a tour of the facility and described how chillers, compressors and other equipment will be used to remove moisture, volatile organic compounds, carbon dioxide and nitrogen from methane gas to make it ready for market.

The higher the methane count the better for natural gas. The gas will come out of the landfill at about 50% methane and leave the plant at 96% methane.

“We want as much methane as possible,” Nightingale said. “You’re never going to get 100%, but 96% is good enough for the pipeline.”

The pipeline will carry the gas to a distribution point in the Wilmington area.

The county has contracted with U.S. Gain, an Appleton, Wisconsin-based company, to sell natural gas produced at the plant.

U.S. Gain plans to sell the gas to the transportation industry, said Bryan Nudelbacher, vice president for business development at the company. Where the gas is sold depends on the marketplace, Nudelbacher said. But there is a growing demand for compressed natural gas to fuel trucks and buses.

Use of the natural gas has grown by 200% in the past five years as it’s put into more truck and bus fleets, Hartke said.

The Prairie View Landfill is on land that once was part of the huge Joliet Arsenal, which was converted to new uses at the end of the last century that include the CenterPoint Intermodal Center, the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie that borders the landfill and the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery.

The county opened the landfill in 2004. About half of the available space has been used for landfill so far, and the landfill is expected to continue taking garbage until 2036. The landfill will continue to produce methane gas once trash hauling to the location stops.