A Novel Proposed Method for Achieving Cities With Zero Anthropogenic Methane Emissions Available to Purchase

The growth of urban population is increasing quickly worldwide, especially in developing countries. This fact substantially affects the generation of waste, whether liquid, gaseous or solid, which are deposited in places commonly known as landfills. The organic matter in solid residues promotes methane production, which is a high impact greenhouse gas. Researches on uses of biogas from anaerobic fermentation’s processes have been made; nevertheless most have focused on Biogas direct burning or on site generation of electricity, and a few on biofuel production for transportation purposes. Regardless of the development of technologies to use biogas as renewable energy source, there is not wide documentation of projects involving population growth and urban planning with sustainable power generation based on organic residues produced within cities. For the Latin American case the implementation of technologies for biogas utilization is poor and projects that allow the integration of methane production based on population growth with its energy needs would highly promote planning and implementation of policies for sustainable resources exploitation. Their impact in the short, medium and long term would be unprecedented at all levels. The model proposed here serves as analysis tool for developing sustainable energy policies based on urban growth prognostics leading to 100% utilization biogas emissions for both electrical and fuel power generation. In the methodology used is performed an identification and geographic location of the main emissions sources such as landfills and sewage plants. Main solid waste generation sources are identified and an estimation of organic residues amount is made. Based on organic residues and methane production models provided by EPA, it is possible to obtain a long-term estimate of landfill biogas generation according to demographic growth prognostics. The overall power generation provided by a purification and separation plant is obtained from past estimations. Electrical energy and pure methane are produced. Model is validated in Panama City, which authors analyze the implementation of a separation plant whose objective is the adaptation of biogas for automotive purposes covering all their energy demand with electrical energy generated from a percentage of collected biogas. It hopes to have a major impact on the public urban transport fleet of Panama and a future implementation of pipeline that will feed the energy requirements of the city.