Home » Resources » Landfill Gas Emissions Model

Landfill Gas Emissions Model

Description

Excel based model to estimate generation and emission rates for total landfill gas, methane, carbon dioxide, non methane organic compounds (NMOCs), and other hazardous air pollutants (HAPS) from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills.

Questions this resource can help answer

What is the amount and rate of methane and non-methane pollution emitted by municipal solid waste landfills?
Which Clean Air Act control requirements is a specific landfill subject to?

How do I use this resource?

The spreadsheet model allows a user to enter landfill characteristics such as year when landfill was opened and annual tons of waste added. User then selects a methane gas generation value, reviews the pollutant gas concentrations for non-methane pollutants. The model then calculates methane, landfill gas, and non-methane pollutant generation.

Pro tips

Resource information

Resource owner

Format

Website

Backup URL

Update Frequency

Irregularly

Geographic Coverage

United States

Technical specifications

Methodology

Model uses first-order decay kinetics to simulate landfill gas generation and emissions. The model applies methane generation factors to waste masses at landfills to predict the annual mass of methane formed. Other hazardous air pollutants are estimated using concentration rates based on AP42 emissions factors

Sectors

Commercial

Other Specifications

Requires MS Excel 2010 or more recent. Requires that Visual Basic Macros are enabled in Excel. Minimum of 64 MB of RAM required. 10 megabytes of hard drive space required. Screen resolution should be 1920×1080 pixels.

Related resources

Air emissions data

Colorado Air Pollution Control Division Map Portal

Online mapping tool to search, visualize, and download air pollution emissions and regulatory information.

Air emissions dataAir emissions reductions strategy

CoST

The Control Strategy Tool (CoST), developed in 2008, is part of EPA's Emissions Modeling Framework (EMF). CoST is used to estimate emissions reductions and engineering costs associated with control strategies applied to point and area sources of air pollutant emissions to support the analyses of air pollution policies and regulations.

Air emissions dataAir emissions reductions strategyTransportation

MOVES

EPA's MOtor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) is a state-of-the-science emission modeling system that estimates emissions for mobile sources at the national, county, and project level for criteria air pollutants, greenhouse gases, and air toxics, available under EPA's Open Source Software policy.

Air emissions dataAir emissions reductions strategy

SMOKE

SMOKE is primarily an emissions processing system designed to create gridded, speciated, hourly emissions for input into a variety of air quality models such as CMAQ, REMSAD, CAMX and UAM. SMOKE supports area, biogenic, mobile (both onroad and nonroad), and point source emissions processing for criteria, particulate, and toxic pollutants. For biogenic emissions modeling, SMOKE uses the Biogenic Emission Inventory System. SMOKE is also integrated with the on-road emissions model MOVES.

Air emissions dataAir quality dataAir quality managementCommunicationsDemographic dataHealth impactsTransportationVulnerability data

Resilience, Air Quality, and Sustainability Analysis Tools

This page provides resources for measuring transportation greenhouse gas emissions and air quality impacts, and incorporating climate adaptation and resilience features as they relate to a proposed project.

Air emissions dataAir emissions reductions strategyAir quality dataAir quality managementCommunicationsEnergyLaws and regulations

Clearing the Air

The EDF Turbine Map is an advocacy-focused geospatial tool developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in partnership with Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres. It is designed to expose the environmental and health impacts of gas-fired combustion turbines across the United States.