JACKSON TWP — A local landfill is seeing its investment in clean and cost-effective energy pay off.

The Seneca Landfill has achieved national recognition after installing the state’s first compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station, fueling its fleet of trucks with gas extracted from the waste processed on site.

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) recently announced that the Silver Excellence Award in the landfill gas and biogas category will go to the Seneca Landfill.

The company will receive the award Aug. 22 at SWANA’s annual conference in Nashville, Tenn.

Edward Vogel, vice president of Vogel Holdings, said the CNG station made sense as a cost-effective and environmentally conscious alternative to diesel fuel.

“We run CNG trucks. So it was a natural transition to ask, ‘Why can’t we put a fueling station right there?’” said Vogel. “That’s like having your own gas supply for your car.”

The site’s energy efficiency efforts are made up of three facilities: a high BTU gas separation plant, the CNG filling station and a combined heat and electricity generation engine.

These facilities work together to provide fuel for trucks as well as electricity and heat.

General Manager David Smith said he hadn’t seen anything like this before.

“Having been in this industry for years, we always try to take care of the environment,” he said, “but coming here ... I wasn’t expecting this.”

The process starts with the waste in the landfill.

Decomposing garbage produces landfill gas — a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane — which is collected and piped to the gas separation plant.

There it is processed into methane, much of which is sold to a local utility and transported via pipeline.

The plant produces enough natural gas to meet the needs of 4,000 homes per year, according to a release by the company.

Gas not sold through the pipeline goes to the CNG filling station or the heat and electricity generation engine.

Vogel said about 25 percent of the company’s fleet is powered by the station, and that number will increase as aging diesel trucks are replaced by CNG-powered vehicles.

“I think it’s the perfect circle. The goal would be to do 100 percent of our fleet with it,” Vogel said. “(We have) 35 trucks running on it and another six ordered.”

The station works like a normal gas station, with drivers pulling up, swiping a card and filling their trucks by attaching a dispensing hose.

The station is not only for the landfill’s trucks.

The landfill has already been contacted by a company looking to fill its vehicles at the new station, Vogel said.

“It works out for us,” he said. “It’s better than trying to make electricity; I know that.”

The landfill originally had tried to use its gas to generate and sell electricity, but found it wasn’t cost effective for most of the year.

Now the company uses the gas for its heat and electricity engine only in the winter, increasing the engine’s profitability by harnessing the heat it generates while running.

The company does this by sending cooling fluid through tubes around the engine which absorbs the heat, preventing the engine from overheating, Smith said.

The now-heated fluid is then piped to buildings on site to provide heat.

It is also piped to the landfill’s water treatment center.

In addition to extracting gas from the landfill, Smith said the company extracts a great deal of water that either came with the garbage or entered the landfill through rain and runoff.

The landfill pipes this water out and then treats it at a treatment center on site.

This becomes a challenge in the winter when the water needs to be at a temperature warm enough to sustain cleansing bacteria.

Using the engine became a more cost-effective way to do this, while at the same time providing heat energy to various parts of the facility.

These are some of the many ways the landfill makes the most of its available resources, he said.

“People think of landfills like, ‘Oh it’s a dump; it’s dirty.’ Well, we’re taking waste and treating and using it as fuel to power our trucks and treat waste water,” he said. “It’s a very engineered facility.”

This can be seen throughout the facility as every aspect of the operations are monitored by numerous sensors and redundancies to prevent malfunctions or inefficiencies.

In addition to the cost efficiencies, the company also emphasizes the environmental impact of switching to natural gas.

Converting 22 diesel trucks to CNG would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 515 metric tons a year, according to a company news release.

This, it said, is the equivalent of planting 13,202 trees, removing 109 cars from the roads and recycling 185 tons of waste.

While the company sees the benefits now, it was and in many ways still is a challenge.

“It’s a lot of work and it’s not easy,” said Vogel. “We’re learning. Where it can be done, I think it’s a great opportunity.”

Both Smith and Vogel indicated this could explain why so few companies have these kinds of operations ongoing.

“You have to run the numbers and see what makes sense financially and for the environment,” Smith said.

He said operations like this may not make sense for everyone, especially those without the time or resources to figure out all the aspects of this new technology.

“They are complicated. They take a lot of patience,” said Vogel. “It’s something you learn by doing. It’s not something you go to college for.”

As a company that can commit time and resources into it, he said the investment has worked out for Seneca Landfill.

“We’ve been able to show that just selling the gas there’s a real market,” said Vogel. “It’s something that is sustainable.”

Now the company is looking at installing filling stations at facilities in Grove City and in Beaver County.

“It’s an interesting project,” Vogel said. “I mean who the heck would think you could do something like this?”