Mississippi will soon be home to a first-of-its kind plant—but it’s not the Kemper County energy facility.
French multinational gas supplier Air Liquide announced on Thursday its plans to construct and operate a biogas purification plant that aims to transform landfill gas to renewable natural gas.
Air Liquide says the plant, slated for the town of Walnut, in Tippah County, will have the ability to purify methane emitted by decomposing organic matter in landfills to make it suitable for heating, much like natural gas.
Air Liquide will also build and operate a four-mile pipeline that will feed the biogas it produces into a natural gas pipeline in the area, expanding Walnut’s utility services.
“We are certainly pleased to play a part in bringing this exciting renewable energy technology to our landfill operations in Walnut,” said Bobby Thompson, chairman of the Northeast Mississippi Solid Waste Management Authority, in a statement.
Touted as the first landfill biogas purification plant in the U.S., the company expects to break ground on the plant in the first quarter of 2017. The converted gas released from waste should transform into a renewable energy capable of heating an estimated 4,500 homes per year, the company said.
The site is owned by the Northeast Mississippi Solid Waste Management Authority and operated by national solid-waste company Waste Connections and receives approximately 350,000 tons of waste per year.
Chet Benham, vice president of Air Liquide’s U.S. division of advanced technologies, said the project’s final product—a renewable, lower carbon energy—would benefit the plant’s surrounding cities.
In April, the Air Liquide said it launched 12 biogas purification units in Europe during the year prior, tripling its capacity there. Worldwide, Air Liquide has designed and deployed 50 such units, according the a Natural Gas World report.
“The installation of the pipeline will enable us to expand our utility services to support our continued growth.” said Vicki Skinner, mayor of Walnut, in a statement.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.