LFG Flaring CDM Improves Air Quality at Landfill
ABSTRACT
Most of landfills in Indonesia are open dumping which are source of airborne pollutants and diseases. They are environmental and social liability for the local governments who own and operate them.
Organic fraction of municipal solid waste degrades to become landfill gas by anaerobic digestion that contains mainly 45~58% of Methane gas with has a global warming potential of 21 times the reference greenhouse Carbon Dioxide. The government of Indonesia is a signatory of Kyoto Protocol and is drafting a bill to make it mandatory for local governments to convert dumps to sanitary landfills.
In a Public Private Partnership among local municipal governments, private enterprise, and multilateral development banks, Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is utilized to convert social and environmental liability with investment to obtain carbon offset revenue from the sale of United Nation accredited Certified Emission Reduction (CER). This Landfill Gas Flaring (LFGF) project reduces substantial amount of Green House Gases (GHG) and improve air quality and hence mitigate global climate change. In addition, funds for the poor scavenger community development programme are shared from theC ER revenue.
In this project, PT Gikoko Kogyo Indonesia, an air quality management and biomass power plant engineering company is the project developer. The technology for LFGCC which involves capping of MSW and flaring & control system is transferred from a leading technical consultants with detailed engineering and fabrication works undertaken locally by the project developer’s workshop in house under license agreements
A small scale internal combustion gas engine generate parasitic load and supply motive power for community development centre.
The first Indonesian LFGF project has been constructed in Pontianak landfill and will soon follow by Bekasi, Makassar and Palembang landfills. These projects should generate over a million Carbon Dioxide Equivalent tons up to year 2012, contributing towards Climate Change mitigation.
Keywords: landfill, CDM, Indonesia
