WM East Oak Landfill Gas-to-Liquids

WM East Oak Landfill Gas-to-Liquids was a joint venture project led by Envia Energy — a partnership of Waste Management, NRG Energy, Ventech Engineers International, and Velocys — to build and operate one of the first gas-to-liquids (GTL) plants in the United States using landfill gas (LFG) from the East Oak Landfill in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma as feedstock. The initiative aimed to convert LFG (a mix of methane and CO₂ captured from decomposing waste) and supplemental natural gas into synthesis gas, which was then processed through Fischer-Tropsch technology into renewable liquid fuels and hydrocarbons such as diesel, naphtha, and waxes, demonstrating scalable renewable fuel production from waste gas at moderately sized landfill sites. The facility, commissioned by Velocys, achieved more than 6,000 hours of Fischer-Tropsch reactor operation and produced over 1.6 million liters of renewable product before ceasing operations in 2018. It validated the use of “microchannel” FT technology at a commercial scale with landfill-derived feedstock, establishing a proof-of-concept for distributed GTL solutions from biogas.