Municipal solid waste landfills release a methane rich biogas, which can be combusted in standalone electricity generators. This work, which measured the exhausted off-gas from a biogas fed
generator, which at an average of 526˚C was 5,556 Nm3
/hour and contained 11% CO2. It is
hypothesized that this off-gas could be captured and used as a year-round carbon source for
photosynthetic microalgae. A pilot plant concept is modeled to be built at later date for a
feasibility CO2 capture study. The proposed pilot plant consists of ten 1 m3 tanks (1 seed tank, 3
sets of biological triplicates) and would take 0.34% of the total off-gas. The model produced
indicated that it could be operated above 15˚C and 30˚C year-round and has the potential to
produce 2.7 kg dry weight microalgae m-3 day-1 of lipid-rich microalgae for research and market analysis
purposes.
