50 Beijing sanitation vehicles will use biogas energy

Vehicles that transport and clean trash will use the biogas generated from the landfill as a power source. By the end of the year, 50 such environment-friendly sanitation vehicles will be employed at Chang'an Street and the Second Ring Road in Beijing.

This "new" car energy comes from the Anding Landfill in Beijing. The garbage that is buried here can produce 2,000 cubic meters of biogas per hour, reaching 48,000 cubic meters a day. At present, the biogas here can only be burned to prevent the biogas from being directly discharged into the atmosphere to cause pollution or pose an explosion hazard.

In the 10 years, the Beijing Sanitation Group will invest tens of millions of yuan in this landfill to construct a comprehensive treatment facility for landfill gas. Those useful gases are collected in special containers by machines and then cooled to minus 160 degrees Celsius (equivalent to the surface temperature of the lunar surface) to make the combustible gases liquid; then, the liquids are purified through a series of physical and chemical operations. Mainly methane (the main component of natural gas) can be used as an energy source for automobiles.

Compared with the compressed natural gas used by buses, these natural gas from the garbage dumps are transported and stored in the liquid state and finally filled into the car's "oil tank." In order to facilitate the refueling, a dedicated liquefied natural gas filling station will also be established.

In addition to the gas used in the landfill site for fuel, other landfill biogas are reused in various ways. For example, the Beisenshu Landfill uses landfill gas to generate electricity, which can stably supply 2000 kilowatts of power generation capacity and make the landfills self-sufficient in the amount of electricity needed for daily life and production operations. The Asuwei Landfill uses landfill gas for grid-connected power generation. The installed capacity of the system in the first phase is 2,724 kilowatts, which can be used by about 17,000 families in Beijing.