Preliminary carbon reduction emission assessment with GCLs as vertical in barriers for municipal solid waste dumps sites in China

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As the rise of global carbon emission reduction policies, traditional cement-based, transportation-intensive vertical barriers begin to phase out, and high efficiency and environmental friendly alternatives, such as GCLs, gain increasing popularity. Albeit the apparent advantages, in the era of Carbon-Neutrality target, a quantitative analysis of carbon reduction associated with emerging techniques is not available. This study attempts to make a preliminary effort to access the total carbon emissions in the containment of 27000 waste dumps and 542 sanitary landfills with barriers manufactured under three schemes, including cement (Scheme 1), high-density polyethylene geomembrane and compacted clay liner (Scheme 2), and high-density polyethylene geomembrane and compacted clay liner (GCLs-GM) (Scheme 3). The calculation mothed in 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines is used in this paper. For sanitary landfills, scheme 1 produced 4548.7811440.13 kt CO₂, scheme 2 produced 155.89392.04 kt CO₂, and scheme 3 produced 65.08203.90 kt CO₂. Meanwhile, for waste dumps, scheme 1 produced 226599.52569895.69 kt CO₂, scheme 2 produced 7765.8919529.79 kt CO₂, and scheme 3 produced 3241.8410157.51 kt CO₂. When waste dumps select scheme 3 replacing scheme 1 as vertical barriers, 223357.68559738.18 kt CO₂ is reduced, which is essentially equivalent to 57.6% of the total annual carbon emissions in Zhejiang province, China. These preliminary results showcased the vast potential of the use of GCLs-GM as barriers for carbon emission reduction in a range of engineering barrier practices involving the containment of vast amounts of solid wastes from mining, industrial, and agricultural operations.

Keywords: carbon emissions, landfill, vertical barrier, GCLs

9th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics (ICEG2023)

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