Systems and methods for controlling gas flow from landfills

Abstract

An automated, computer-controlled landfill gas recovery system includes a number of equipment vaults, with each vault being associated with one or more wells in the landfill. The wells are in fluid communication with a piping system located in the associated vault, with the piping system including a main pneumatic control valve that can be adjusted to establish gas flow rate through the well or wells. Also, each vault includes a shielded enclosure that holds sensors and a local vault controller for generating signals representative of flow rate, vacuum, and oxygen/methane/carbon dioxide content of the gas being extracted from the well. These signals are sent to a remote computer. Based on the signals generated by the sensors, the computer communicates with each vault controller to control the pneumatic control valve of each vault to establish a gas flow rate from the associated well as appropriate to accord with one of several user-selected process control regimes.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.