Accelerated stabilization of municipal solid waste in bioreactor landfills

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Publication Title
Accelerated stabilization of municipal solid waste in bioreactor landfills

Abstract
In recent years, bioreactor landfills, which involve leachate recirculation/injection operations to enhance the moisture levels within the municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills and facilitate rapid waste decomposition and early waste stabilization have emerged as a promising MSW management option. However, unlike conventional landfills, there is a lack of well-established procedures/methods for an effective design and operation of such landfills primarily due to a limited understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes and their coupled interactions that influence the MSW behaviour in landfills. Several researchers have developed numerical models to simulate MSW behaviour in landfills but only a few models have comprehensively considered the simultaneous interactions of hydraulic, mechanical, biochemical, and thermal processes within the waste in their numerical models. In this study, a brief overview of the past studies at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) including laboratory, field, and numerical investigations regarding MSW behaviour in bioreactor landfills is presented. Further, a numerical modelling framework newly developed at UIC that incorporates the coupled thermo-hydro-bio-mechanical processes in MSW landfills is briefly discussed. Finally, the predictive capabilities of the developed coupled numerical model in demonstrating the accelerated stabilization of MSW and associated long-term performance of bioreactor landfills are highlighted.
Authors
G. Kumar; Krishna R. Reddy; J. K. Janga

Published In

18th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE2024)

Theme

E - Environment, water and energy

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