The economics of MSW are changing as greenhouse gas emissions become critical.

Think of a properly designed dump as a way to sequester carbon. Recycle everything recyclable, but put the plastics, wood, paper, and organic stuff into the dump, collect and use the methane, and let the carbon stay there forever. Burning the carbon just puts it back into the air. When you have concentrated solid carbon ready to inter, do it! This is a cheap way to sequester solid carbon, especially compared to the loony ideas of scrubbing CO2 from a power plant exhaust and compressing it to enough pressure to pump it thousands of feet down an oil well somewhere.

Give it up, clean coal guys. It's a bum idea being floated by politicians to ensure they don't upset coal state voters. Do you have any vague conception of the horsepower you would need to compress the volumes of CO2 coming out of a power plant? The capital cost? The auxiliary load eating up a good portion of the generation so you have to burn more fuel and release more CO2? It doesn't work. Landfill instead!

Submitted by a former coal-fired power plant engineer with 14 years of plant experience.

wow!! I have got experts visiting my blog. Of course, it will the best to follow 3Rs before revovering from energy from MSW - reduce, recycle and re-use. Clean technologies like plasma arc can also do wonders with a waste like MSW.

Dear Sekhon Saheb
I am thankful for your kind and encouraging words regarding my articles and blog posts. I would be honored if you can share your email address with me so as to discuss waste-to-energy in a more comprehensive manner.
Thanks a lot
Salman