Mass Balance on Water and Dry Solids from Pilot-scale Landfill Bioreactor Studies

Pilot-scale experiments simulating bio-active landfilling conditions were conducted to evaluate the effects of operating conditions on the kinetics and overall quantities of methane production from anaerobic digestion of real municipal solid waste. Several modalities of leachate injection and pretreatment operations of the waste were studied using six Landfill Simulation Reactors, which were incubated at 35°C for more than a year. In a first stage, a detailed characterization of the waste at the initial state was carried out and several methods were compared to estimate the biogas and methane potential. Then, mass balance calculations on water and dry solids were established considering leachate inputs and outputs and biogas production, and compared to the actual differences of masses of water and dry solids in the reactors between the beginning and the end of the experiments.