Municipal solid waste landfills release a methane rich biogas, which can be combusted in standalone electricity generators. This work, which measured the exhausted off-gas from a biogas fed generator, which at an average of 526˚C was 5,556 Nm³/hour and contained 11% CO₂. It is hypothesized that this off-gas could be captured and used as a year-round carbon source for photosynthetic microalgae. A pilot plant concept is modeled to be built at later date for a feasibility CO₂ capture study. The proposed pilot plant consists of ten 1 m³ tanks (1 seed tank, 3 sets of biological triplicates) and would take 0.34% of the total off-gas. The model produced indicated that it could be operated above 15˚C and 30˚C year-round and has the potential to produce 2.7 kgdry weight microalgae m⁻³ day⁻¹ of lipid-rich microalgae for research and market analysis purposes.
Keywords:
Electricity generator; landfill biogas; off-gas; carbon dioxide (CO₂); microalgae; lipids