Turning garbage into gas: Wareham company brings innovation to renewable energy

Garbage may not jump to mind when talking about renewable energy, but a Wareham-based tech company is changing the conversation. 

LoCI Controls’ sensing and software system improves data collection to strengthen methane emissions capture while cutting risks to landfill operations, making what the EPA calls “a lost opportunity to capture and use a significant energy resource” safer and more efficient.

Mechanical engineer Melinda Sims co-founded the company in 2013 with fellow graduate student Andrew Campanella. Sims wanted to provide a better tool for collecting and tracking data for people in the municipal solid waste industry who work hard for the public good, she says. 

“That was my inspiration,” said Sims. “It's been really satisfying over the last 10 years to see the landfill industry embrace the data more and more.”

The company, which employs about 60 people and serves customers in 26 states, manufactures sensors to continually monitor underground methane and other gases as well as pressure and temperature inside the matrix of collection pipes embedded in large landfills.

The sensors send information they collect to the company’s software, which automatically reads it and makes adjustments to improve methane capture and keep the system operating safely.

The system eliminates the need for landfill employees to make manual adjustments in the field, which is usually done monthly. The round-the-clock monitoring also reduces the risk of fire, odors and other hazards.

Landfills that harvest methane to generate electricity or fuel vehicles see a 10% to 25% increase in the amount of methane captured, directly impacting bottom-line revenue, according to Sims.

“There is a cost to the system, but most places will make their money back within a very short amount of time,“ she said.

LoCI Controls partnered with Colorado-based tech company TrelliSense to win a $350,000 InnovateMass grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in March. 

TrelliSense developed laser tracker technology that measures emissions escaping into the air above ground. The trackers emit invisible infrared laser beams across the top of the landfill to retroreflectors on the other side that bounce the beams back.

The grant is funding a demonstration of the combined systems’ ability to improve methane capture at the Crapo Hill landfill in New Bedford.

The integration of two proven technologies into a comprehensive system for the first time made the project a good fit for the grant, according to Leslie Nash, a senior program director with MassCEC.

“Together they offered a very exciting and novel project that MassCEC and our team were excited to support, particularly because their technology will basically abate landfill methane gas and convert that wasted gas into electricity to use,” said Nash.

“LoCI [Controls] has an impressive solution to help landfills capture — and not release — more of that methane, and we help them get even better by measuring where and when methane is still coming up out of the landfill," said Lee Sutherland, an Optomechanical Engineer with TrelliSense. 

While satellites and drones can provide snapshots of above-ground methane emissions, the TrelliSense technology provides a more detailed and reliable picture through continual monitoring.

Methane, which makes up 50% of landfill gas generated when organic trash decomposes, is 80 times more harmful to the climate over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide, according to the MIT Climate Portal website. It also harms human health.

“Methane has a few problems with it, especially when emitted near urban areas,” Sutherland said. “It can mix with nitrous oxides from automotive exhaust and other things … to produce ground-level ozone."

“There are thousands of American lives lost every year to that alone,” Sutherland added.