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There have been estimates that the solid waste stream of municipal garbage could be converted to 5% of the total electric power requirement. In response to this potential many high capital cost incinerators have been installed around the country during the last two decades. Success has been marginal and many have been prematurely shut down because of technical problems and public concerns about emissions and potentially toxic ash. The alternative is to continue to use landfills, but to capture the methane that is produced by the decay of organic matter for the production of heat and electricity. Several such facilities have been installed in recent years and are demonstrating increasingly favorable operation. The purpose of this project was to research the techniques and technologies that are used to harness landfill gas, along with the related considerations of state and federal regulations and public health concerns from exposing the public to unburned and uncleaned landfill gas.

A characteristic of any electric or thermal storage technology is that it is easy to qualitatively describe the benefits, but it is very difficult to quantify the benefit and how a storage system should be best operated since operation is both site specific and requires forecasts of future electric, heating or cooling demand. Ice storage has the advantage of being able to absorb or release heat at a constant temperature of 32 F by using the abundant mass of water as the storage medium. There is no comparable substance that is available for constant temperature storage of space heat. Thus heat storage is typically done much less effectively by sensible heating or cooling of water. Thus, storing cold is more practical than strong heat. Thus, ice for air con-ditioning has been installed at several locations and has been proposed for the expansion of the chiller capacity at Union College to meet the increased demand from two new buildings.