Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 11 (2007) 909–922 Study of the energy potential of the biogas produced by an urban waste landfill in Southern Spain Montserrat Zamorano a,Ã , Jorge Ignacio Pe´rez Pe´rez b , Ignacio Aguilar Pave´s c ,A ´ ngel Ramos Ridao a a Section of Environmental Technology, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Granada, ETSICCP, Campus de Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain b Section of Construction Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Granada, Granada, Spain c Technical Engineering, INAGRA, Company belonging to CESPA, Granada, Spain Received 8 April 2005; accepted 5 May 2005 Abstract Sanitary landfills have been and continue to be one of the most common ways to dispose of urban waste although such landfills inevitably generate waste management problems. Landfills are an important source of anthropogenic CH 4 emissions. In this sense the European Union has passed regulations regarding the effective management of biogas within the framework of an EU policy for renewable energies. The sealed landfill analyzed in this study is an example of energy recovery, but in this case the biogas generated by the landfill is being re-used to produce electrical energy. This article presents the results of the economic viability study, which was carried out previous to the construction of the installation. The results based on the use of empirical and theoretical models show the biogas to have a 45% proportion of methane and an overall flowrate ranging from 250 to 550 N m 3 /h. It is presently being used to produce electricity amounting to approximately 4,500, 000 kW h/year. The economic viability of the installation was estimated by means of the Internal Recovery Rate (IRR) for an exploitation period of 7 years. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Landfill gas; Energy recovery; Renewable energy; Economic analysis ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/rser 1364-0321/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2005.05.007 Ã Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 958 249458; fax: +34 958 246138. E-mail address: zamorano@ugr.es (M. Zamorano).