The first plant in South Florida designed to capture methane gas from a landfill and convert it to high-quality natural gas that can be injected into a pipeline and used to fuel vehicles and homes was inaugurated last week just north of the Indian River County Landfill.
The $42 million facility was made possible by a public-private partnership between Indian River County and Nopetro Energy.
“Historically, the gas that’s produced at Indian River County’s landfill is typically flared, which means all the gas that’s collected as a result of the decomposition of organic waste is burned and put into the atmosphere,” said Jorge Herrera, CEO of Nopetro Energy.
“By us capturing (the gas), we’re doing two very important things. We’re preventing those contaminants from going into the atmosphere. We’re also turning what is otherwise a waste product into a revenue generating resource.”
Himanshu Mehta, managing director for Indian River County’s Solid Waste Disposal District, said the unveiling was a landmark moment for the county.
“It’s a monumental miracle,” Mehta said of the site.
The Nopetro plant is the fourth green energy scheme in the past two decades envisioned setting up shop next to the county landfill.
From 2008 to 2017, INEOS Bio Planet Energy developed a much-lauded waste-to-energy facility that promised great-paying jobs and cheap fuel to the community, but in the end became a black hole for approximately $129 million in local, state and federal grant dollars.
Then a company called Alliance BioEnergy, fronted by former Hollywood movie executives, made a bid to take over the facility and convert the region’s yard waste into simple sugar, which would in turn be used to make ethanol. The initial financing – an $8 million USDA-backed loan – fell through and those West Palm Beach-based operators disappeared.
Next a Texas oilman turned wind- and solar-farmer, David Frankens, and his company Frankens Energy LLC, bought the property after Frankens brought all his key people, including his religious advisor, to study the 150-acre site.
Frankens hoped to grind-up discarded concrete into gravel for roadbeds, and to capture the landfill’s methane. Despite claiming to have big backers from four states, plus his own personal fortune behind the venture, Frankens apparently lost faith in the promised $300 million project, as it never became a reality.
Nopetro Energy uses pressure swing adsorption tanks that take in the gas, along with the toxic pollutants such as siloxanes and volatile organic compounds. Then, the pollutants are filtered to a pipeline where they are burned off at a hot temperature and destroyed, according to Cody Bridges, plant operator at Nopetro Energy.
“Our main goal is to have around 97-to-98 percent methane in the pipeline. We start with only about 50 percent methane. The rest is all the other contaminants that we’re removing,” Bridges said. “By the end of the process, it should come out to around 98 percent methane.”
This methane is then compressed and purified, becoming pipeline-quality gas. The natural gas is then injected into the Florida City Gas distribution network.
“It’s a lot of different stages,” Bridges said.
Staff writer Lisa Zahner contributed to this story.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
