Not Letting It Go to Waste
EPA Grant Propels Engineer to China to Teach Methane Use, Recovery
Jeff Kuo
Jeff Kuo, Cal State Fullerton professor of civil and environmental engineering, will travel to China in April to give workshops on methane recovery techniques and methane’s use as a clean energy source, thanks to a $98,550 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Kuo is speaking as part of the agency’s Methane to Market Partnership, an international initiative advancing cost-effective methane recovery. China produces more methane from landfills than anywhere but the United States.
Methane, which can stay in the atmosphere for a decade, is a greenhouse gas that, although shorter-lived, has more of an adverse effect than the better-known CO2. Landfill operators and leaders of municipalities will gather in Jinan and Chengdu to hear from Kuo about how to control and/or harness methane produced by decomposing waste in landfills.
Kuo is already working on two other methane emission studies in California. The first is funded by a two-year, $600,000 grant he received in August from the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to study methane emissions around natural gas pipelines and processing plants. The second taps a $50,000 California Air Resources Board grant, also awarded last year, to study methane emissions associated with crude-petroleum pipelines and plants. Both grants are prompted by the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which established a comprehensive program of regulatory and market-based mechanisms to achieve quantifiable reductions of greenhouse gases.
The overall objective of both projects is to develop current, reliable and California-specific emission factors, which can be used to establish a more accurate methane emission inventory for the California natural gas system and crude-oil operations.
Photo:
Available online at www.fullerton.edu/newsphotos
Media Contacts:
Jeff Kuo, Engineering, 657-278-3995 or jkuo@fullerton.edu
Russ L. Hudson, Public Affairs, 657-278-4007 or rhudson@fullerton.edu
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