ZULE Flare at Large Landfill Serving Las Vegas
When Republic Services, Inc. (RSI), the owner and operator of Apex Landfill in Clark County, Nevada, needed to install an enclosed low-emission landfill gas flare, they called on the expertise of American Environmental Group, A Tetra Tech Company (AEG). AEG helped RSI comply with emission reduction standards at one of the nation’s largest landfills, just 20 miles north of Las Vegas. The landfill processes 7,500 tons of waste daily and produces about 10 megawatts of electricity.
RSI sells the biogas to CC Landfill Energy (CCLE) under a fixed-price gas supply agreement. CCLE has the potential to generate enough electricity on-site to power up to 8,000 homes.
In 2011 RSI and CCLE began constructing the power generation facility along with an elaborate 10,000- cubic-feet-per-minute (CFM) landfill Gas Collection/Control System and a sulfur removal plant.
RSI assembled a construction team with CR Meyer as the general contractor to construct the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) facility and AEG to install the mechanical equipment and process piping to feed the H2S plant and an enclosed 13-foot-diameter-by-50-foot-high, 5,000-CFM, Ultra Low Emissions (ZULE) Flare, manufactured by John Zink Hamworthy of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The area engineer and the Apex Operations Management team enabled the RSI/AEG/CR Meyer team and multiple engineering firms to work collectively to complete the project successfully, while ensuring the facility’s daily landfilling operations remained uninterrupted. The team used precise planning and logistics to complete the flare installation and sized the facility to eventually process 10,000 CFM.
To support the current and future low-emission landfill gas flow rates, 36-inch-diameter high density polyethylene pipe, weighing almost 100 pounds per foot, was used to connect the wellfield to the blowers, sulfur removal plant, decanted oil, and the flare. Additional manpower and large tracked excavators were used to handle the pipe and fittings during the fusion process. Cranes lifted prefabricated pipe sections and placed them on the pipe supports to precise tolerances for final connections to the mechanical equipment.
The accelerated installation schedule for the ZULE flare necessitated a high attentiveness to efficiency in every facet of the process. AEG completed the installation in 45 days, upgrading the facility’s landfill gas processing capacity to feed the power generation plant well into the future.