Analysis of Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas (Case Study: Manggar Landfill, Balikpapan)

Despite of adverse impacts on the environment, landfill has big potency as renewable energy sources since it generates biogas from organic waste degradation process which can be used for power plant purposes. In 2017, the volume of waste disposed to Manggar Landfill was 128, 000 tons, which mostly are organic waste (59.4%). Therefore, this study aims to estimate the amount of energy that can be generated from landfill as methane, by calculating biogas production in landfill based on waste generation, as well as composition using LandGem and Afvalzorg model. In 2017, Manggar landfill produced about 4×103Mg CH4/year or about 5.31 to 6.44×106 m3/year. The estimated methane then converted to electricity using gas engine and trigeneration methods. Using gas engine, methane from Manggar Landfill is predicted to produce electricity about 787 MWh/month. On the other hand, if trigeneration method applied (by keeping the same gas engine as before), it produces 41.8% of heat which convert to 29.3 kWh of cold. In conclusion, it will be beneficial if Manggar Landfill capture and treat methane for generating electricity since Manggar Landfill produces about 6.44×106 m3/year which can be used for electricity purposes of around 10, 000 people using gas engine.