OREANDA-NEWS. November 19, 2009. The implementation of an investment project, which envisages extracting biogas out of solid domestic waste, started in Gomel on 19 November. The information was released by Grigory Turovets, First Deputy Director General of the Gomel City Housing and Community Amenities Agency, at the presentation of the project.

Specialists of the company have started working at the SDW landfill. Apart from setting up a biogas generation installation the territory where Belarus’ second largest city has been piling up waste for 40 years will be fully reclaimed.

Designed to be accomplished within eight years, the USD 1.8 million project will be invested in and implemented by the Ukrainian company Gassa. The company won the right through an open auction. The project will be implemented stage by stage. The first installation designed to generate electricity out of landfill gas is supposed to go online as early as 2010.

Specialists estimate the landfill gas reserves at 7.5-8 million cubic meters, with methane making up roughly 50%. With waste moulds as high as 22 meters, 54 wells will have to be drilled up to 15 meters below the surface in order to extract the gas out of the compacted refuse. The wells will be connected by three kilometers of collectors. The extracted gas will be delivered to ten gas powered electrical generators. The electricity will be sold to the city water supply company Vodokanal at preferential prices. The electricity will be used to provide electric and heating energy to waste treatment facilities located nearby.

So far over 1,100 projects for extracting landfill gas for the sake of generating heating and electrical energy have been accomplished across the globe. Such projects provide for setting up stationary year-round facilities for full recycling of the organic waste that cities and agribusiness produce without taking up new agricultural or forest lands. Along with earning money the reclamation of landfill gas is an effective way to maintain the carbon dioxide balance in the biosphere and to handle ecological problems because the reclamation of landfill gas reduces uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.