Capstone MicroTurbine Turning Landfill Waste Gas Into Onsite Electricity; NOx level found very low in independent testing of a unit at Puente Hills landfill.

Business Editors

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 9, 2000

Just east of Los Angeles, the world's second largest landfill is snaked with miles of large-diameter pipes bringing methane gas from decaying waste to one of the largest power plants of its kind - 52 megawatts of boilers, bus-sized generators and other process equipment. Dwarfed by it all, a refrigerator-sized 30-kilowatt Capstone MicroTurbine(TM) power system has recently completed its first 1300 hours of operation on landfill gas.

The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts (LACSD) - owner and operator of the Puente Hills landfill - is evaluating the microturbine's performance and potential to provide reliable power generation at remote sites, and do so with low maintenance requirements and extremely low emissions.

The LACSD is world renowned for its innovative and forward-thinking approaches to effective waste management and utilization. Its leadership at the immense Puente Hills landfill in converting greenhouse and pollutant gases into useful heat and electricity - as an alternative to burning or "flaring" these gases - are looked upon by others in the industry as a showcase testbed for environmentally and economically beneficial waste management.

In March, an independent emissions testing company found that the Capstone MicroTurbine easily passed the tests related to hydrocarbon destruction efficiency. A truly remarkable result, however, was the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission rate of just 1.3 parts per million in the oxygen-rich exhaust of this one Capstone system.

"No other small technology we have evaluated can work reliably on landfill gas with NOx emissions equivalent to or below the 30 ppm of flares. To achieve 1.3 ppm is remarkable. That approaches the level of fuel cells, but at a fraction of the cost," said Ed Wheless, LACSD Division Engineer, Solid Waste Management Section.

"We specify that Capstone MicroTurbines using natural gas or propane will generate less than 9 ppm NOx at full load," said Ake Almgren, President and CEO of Capstone Turbine Corporation. "We know that our systems often perform better than this specification, but this independent testing result is the best we've seen yet. We do not expect all of our systems to match this. However, we are quite pleased that this particular unit at the Puente Hills landfill has proven to be such an overwhelmingly positive exception to our already extremely low specification, especially considering that landfill gas is a more challenging fuel source than natural gas or propane."

The landfill gas feeding into the Capstone system is rife with impurities and contaminants that make it a more difficult fuel source than commercial natural gas or propane. The gas mixture is compressed and liquids are removed, but the fuel source is otherwise untreated. Other types of generators have required more extensive "cleaning" of the gas mixture.

Microturbines are small gas turbine generators that create electricity from natural gas, propane, diesel and kerosene - as well as methane-based greenhouse gas such as oilfield flare gas, landfill gas, and agricultural digester gas. Rather than flaring these "waste" gases into the air, some are looking to emerging distributed generation technologies like microturbines to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while generating electricity as an essentially free byproduct.

Headquartered in Woodland Hills, Calif., Capstone Turbine Corporation (www.capstoneturbine.com) is a manufacturer of microturbine power systems. Commercial units began shipping in December 1998.