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Landfills certainly require more power to operate than that gas scheme can provide later. It all sounds and reads like a fairytale but none of this is sustaina
by mikojan 2y ago
Landfills certainly require more power to operate than that gas scheme can provide later.
It all sounds and reads like a fairytale but none of this is sustainable.
- darksaints 2y ago70k homes is about 84MW. You’re gonna have a tough time finding any evidence that running a landfill requires 84MW of electricity.
- tomrod 2y agoI think their point was the delivery of that garbage over time is subject to entropy, and from first principles probably took more energy consumption than a sustained 84MW over the time period the landfill is a viable source for energy. I know nothing about landfill engineering here, to be frank, simply being a grease for good online gearing.
- mikojan 2y agoA single truck requires more energy to operate in a year.
- gruez 2y agoAre you confusing MW (power) with MWh (energy)? There's no way that a truck uses more energy, unless it's running 24/7 or something.
- 486sx33 2y ago84 Megawatts = 112645.86 Horsepower
- 542354234235 2y agoFast and Furious 12: Too Trash Too Furious
- throwup238 2y agoAccording to [1] an electric garbage truck traveling 15,000 miles a year uses about 38,960 kWh. An 84 MW power plant produces 84,000 kWh every hour, or enough to power more than two trucks for an entire year. Even if we assume that the diesel equivalent uses a hundred times as much it's still a tiny fraction of what the plant in TFA produces. [1] https://www.oregon.gov/deq/ghgp/Documents/ElectricGarbageTrucks.pdf https://www.oregon.gov/deq/ghgp/Documents/ElectricGarbageTru...
- rtkwe 2y agoCouple issues with that comparison: 15k seemed low given I drive ~10k a year and I don't work a job that uses my car, so I checked refuse trucks drive on average more like 25k miles per year and there are many servicing a single dump. Also most garbage trucks are still diesel so you've got to 5-10x that power usage number and there's all the vehicles used to compact and move the trash once it reaches the landfill which are also (currently) pretty exclusively diesel powered (think bulldozers and soil compactors with some excavators thrown in). https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10309 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10309
- bluGill 2y agoThe point is this is free energy - all of the energy sent to the trucks is going to be done either way.
- marcosdumay 2y agoSo, you use more of that "enough energy to power them for an ear" that your power plant is outputting every hour. There are plenty of hours in an year. You won't get any meaningful problem by complaining about the OP's approximations.
- _2d30 2y agoA single truck requires more energy to operate in a year than 70k homes do!? I find this extremely difficult to believe. As far as I can tell, the EIA [1] suggests the average home uses 10,791 kWh a year. A gallon of gasoline contains ~33.7 kWh of energy per the EPA/Wikipedia [2]. This would mean that a single truck would be burning 70,000 * 10,791 / 33.7 = 22,414,540 gallons of gasoline a year or 61,409 gallons a day. Seems like wild bullshit to me. [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent#:~:text=The%20ratings%20are%20based%20on,tests%20simulating%20varying%20driving%20conditions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent#:~:....
- throwaway2037 2y agoThis has got to be one of the greatest retorts I have ever read on HN. Hat tip to you.
- CRConrad 2y agoMost trucks -- at least of the kind used for transporting trash to a landfill -- don't burn any gasoline at all. They run on diesel fuel. (But yeah, the original claim still seems orders-of-magnitude off; clearly BS.)
- weaksauce 2y agoyou should note that a gas engine does not convert all that 33kWh of energy into mechanical energy. a gasoline engine has about a 25% conversion into mechanical energy. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml . diesel might be a bit better than a car but it's city driving by nature. just heat alone is the largest waste product in a car or truck
- selimthegrim 2y agoOnly Soviets kept using gas engined trucks and buses past the 50s
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- ericd 2y agoA 500 hp semi truck engine running at peak power is like 350 kw, so 84 megawatts (84,000 kw) is more than 200 of those engines at full throttle at all times.
- daedrdev 2y agoThe gas is generated by the chemistry of the stuff that was put there. Moving the stuff there takes a lot of energy, but everything sitting there mainly just needs a pump and treatment system.
- mikojan 2y agoThis is besides the point because environmentalists (who were carped at above) tend to seek to reduce the amount of trash that needs to be shipped off to somewhere.
- bluGill 2y agoreducing trash is useful. Recycling of trash is sometimes worse than throwing it in a landfill. There are many different plastics and many different grades of used paper so there is no one size fits all. People often want to think I recycle so I'm good - but effort is needed to reduce packaging and things that break early.
- gosub100 2y agoThis is my argument against recycling. It is not sustainable to recover a tiny amount of energy when balanced with the extra diesel-guzzling truck traversing the neighborhood. All so we can think we're "making a difference" by keeping plastic bottles out of a landfill.
- gruez 2y ago>extra diesel-guzzling truck At least where I live, the garbage trucks have split compartments which means there's no additional trucks.
- bluGill 2y agoStill additional trucks as the truck cannot hold as much - one compartment will fill faster than the other.
- maxerickson 2y agoAre you sure? The truck goes a couple of miles on 7 pounds of diesel, how much material is it able to recover in a couple of miles?
- kergonath 2y ago> It is not sustainable to recover a tiny amount of energy when balanced with the extra diesel-guzzling truck traversing the neighborhood. It’s a good thing we have electric motors, then. An additional benefit is that they are much less likely to wake you up when they get your bins at 5am.
- gosub100 2y agoExactly. Recycling shouldn't be implemented if it uses dirty energy. There should be accounting and accountability. Don't pretend an operation is green unless it really is.
- coding123 2y agoMaybe someone should write a book about virtue signaling and it's dangers.