Walking the trails in the city park, you’ll see a couple of huge orange flames shooting up amongst rhe trees. First time I saw them was at night and it looked like a tree fire. The flames are actually coming from a couple of pipe-ish structures in the Clean Water Services facility (the city’s sewage wastewater treatment plant).
What are there flames burning 24/7 at the wastewater plant?
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They are burning off methane gas which is likely being generated from the organic matter breaking down during the treatment process. If allowed to build up there is a very real risk of an explosion, so the gas is burned off as you’ve seen.
When bacteria decompose organic matter like in sewage methane is one of the things that is produced.
It is better to burn it than just release it into the atmosphere because it is a more potent greenhouse gas by a factor of over 80 times. It will on average remain in the atmosphere for 12 years, it breaks down to carbon dioxide naturally too.
Even better is to burn in a way we can use the energy compared to just a flame in the air.
Gas flares.
you see them all over west Texas oilfields when flying at night. Seems like such a huge waste, but there’s no easy way to collect/use the gas. For the sewage plant it will be methane they’re burning off.
Probably methane which will be the main gas released by decomposing matter at the sewage works.
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