What is the Quantity of Methane Gas Emitted from a typical Landfill Methane Stripping Plant?
At standard temperature and pressure, about 25mg/l of methane gas can dissolve in water. In a landfill environment, where the atmosphere may typically comprise 60% methane and 40% carbon dioxide by volume, then this figure would reduce to a maximum dissolved methane concentration of about 15mg/l. In practice and in our experience, concentrations of methane dissolved in leachate very rarely exceed this value in actual samples, although they can frequently approach it. If more than 99% of this gas is stripped from the leachate during passage through the plant, then this represents up to about 15 grammes of methane per cubic metre of leachate treated, or up to 18kg of methane gas per day. Since the gramme molecular weight of methane is 16, then 16 grammes of methane will occupy 22.4 litres at STP. So, the 18kg of methane emitted each day will occupy about 25 cubic metres. In annual terms, if operating continuously at maximum rate, with leachate containing maximum concentrations of dissolv
