On Friday, Kean and Colin Burlingham went and met with Christopher Sales, an expert in resource recovery from waste and biodegradation of environmental contaminants. Unfortunately, we were not able to ask all of the questions that we had prepared as we ran out of time, but Professor Sale was very helpful with everything he could tell us. One important thing Professor Sales helped us with is giving us the contact information for a landfill plant near by so we can acquire data for this area. In addition, we all continued to research more on our topics. Our interview questions are posted below:
-CB
Christopher
Sales
Environmental
Engineer
CAT
381A
Questions
· Tell
us about you:
§
Compare populations
·
Per capita
§
Percentages of trash incinerated? (Metals? Plastics? Ect)
§
CO2 regulations?
§
Methane and CO2 released from landfills
§
Talk to his student
·
Sandtown Landfill Felton Delaware
·
Methane management system
§
Scholar.google.com
§
EREF
·
Environmental Research and Education Foundation
§
Contact Professor Sabrina Spatarie
·
Works on life cycle assessment
§
Compare technologies
· During
waste assortment how often can errors occur during the process? For example
plastics being mixed in with metals.
§
Inert vs combustible
§
Energy per weight
· In
landfills, specifically what kinds of pollutants are contained in the liquid
run-off?
§
?
· With
landfills being the most common method of waste disposal in the United States,
what will happen when there is no longer any viable area to hold landfills?
§
?
· What
kind of alternatives do you think could be viable in place of landfills?
§
Compost
§
Recycle
§
Waste water treatment plant
· What
kind of harm has the island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean done to the
environment thus far? Would it be more or less environmentally beneficial to
dispose of this waste?
§
?
· What
do you believe is a more efficient system of creating energy: the use of
incineration to burn trash or the use of methane capture to generate energy?
§
?
· What
are your thoughts on adding incineration plants on the outskirts of
Philadelphia to help eliminate trash and generate energy?
§
Public relations problems
§
Need to prove to people
·
Educate them
·
Slow but release of CO2 and Methane from landfills
§
Running out of landfill space
· Philadelphia
used to have incineration plants but no longer does. What do you believe the reason for the
removal of these plants is?
§
Unknown
§
Either money or public perception
· Methane
is approximately 20 times stronger than CO2.
Does methane biodegrade in the atmosphere?
§
Find half life of methane
§
Will degrade eventually
·
Dr Decaro / Dr Warren
· Could
we recover more waste before incineration?
§
Compost
§
Waste water treatment plants
·
Controlled methane production from food waste
·
Use about 5% of all energy needed in US
·
Anaerobic digestion
§
Recover rare earth metals
·
Mining is bad
· Large
amounts of CO2 are produced in the importation and exportation of trash into
and out of Sweden. In your opinion, is
this process better for the environment than just building new WTE plants or
landfills?
§
Depends on location
§
Produce less waste
§
Increase recycling
§
Can capture CO2
·
Scrubbers
·
Can be turned into fuel
o
Through hydrogen
§
Landfills
·
Methane and CO2 released all over
§
Incineration
·
Contained pollutants
· In
landfills, methane is a large pollutant.
What is a useful product of methane, which doesn’t harm the environment
if possible?
§
?
· Do
you think incineration is the solution to the solid waste crisis?
§
?
· Do
you think incineration can remove the need of landfills?
§
?
· Do
you think its reasonable to require all hospital waste to be incinerated to
protect the public against infectious diseases?
§
?
· Do
you think the pollution control equipment’s are good enough to eliminate
pollution concerns?
§
?
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