Local Travels Remembered...all about the Gas

It has been my pleasure to experience and see many different things as a student.  Appalachian State University has a great alternative energy center (http://energy.appstate.edu/).  As usual, I stumbled into something GREAT!! (but more on how this came to be later).

With the ASU Energy Center I had the pleasure and joy of hosting some visitors from Brazil!  The delegation came as a part of ASU's efforts in the Environmental Protection Agency's "Methane to Markets" (now the Global Methane Initiative found at www.globalmethane.org).  ASU won a phase one grant to study the feasibility of capturing landfill gas from a landfill (open pit dump) near the town of Maracanau in the Brazilian state of Ceara (northern Brazil).

Basically everyone is Brazilian except two, Ieda just wanted you to know for which team she cheers in the World Cup!

The Brazilians came to visit to see how a gas capture system would work, how it would work, and how they could use the system.  The great news for you is that these projects are very accessible for you to visit in North Carolina!  I was lucky to accompany them on a visit to two NC based landfill gas capture projects.  One was near Burnsville, NC and the other was a park in Jackson County (west of Asheville).

In the posts to come I'll give some photos, explanations, descriptions and opinions on those projects!