Despite progress in residential waste diversion, residual waste - that fraction which cannot be recycled or composted - must continue to be managed by municipalities. Zero waste and environmental groups worry that waste-to-energy (WtE) incinerators discourage diversion, while both incineration and landfill have been stigmatized in the popular consciousness such that WtE incinerators in particul...

Thermal technologies for the treatment of waste are once again attracting interest, particularly in Europe and North Amerca, as landfill space becomes scarcer and landfill regulations become more stringent. Plasma technologies can be used to destroy waste at high temperatures, using electricity to convert waste into a fuel gas and an inert rock. The Plasma Arc Waste Destruction System’s (PAWDS)...

An investigation to compare the efficiency of landfill gas collection systems with different well numbers (one, two or four) and configurations (vertical or horizontal) has been conducted. The study has shown that with an increasing number of wells, the gas collection rate and efficiency are enhanced and the gas flux at the surface also becomes more uniform. In addition, the study has also sugg...

At present, the main contributors to waste to energy are municipal solid waste, manufacturing waste and landfill gas. Probably we are all most familiar with the first (MSW), which involves the garbage that the garbage men pick up regularly at our homes and which goes to a landfill, a transfer station, or incinerator. Today we are going to introduce you to something relatively new on the alterna...

In developing countries land-filling is the most common form of waste management that is practiced. Landfills are known to be anthropogenic sources of air pollutants that have a negative impact on both environmental and human health. People who work on landfill sites are particularly at risk of adverse health effects associated with the inhalation of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), such as vol...

Estimating odor emissions from landfill sites is a complicated task because of the various chemical and biological species that exist in landfill gases. In this study, the relative concentration of ethanol and other odorous compounds emitted from the working surface at a landfill in China was analyzed. Gas sampling was conducted at the landfill on a number of selected days from March 2012 to Ma...

The selection of a landfill site is considered as a complicated task because this process is based on many factors and restrictions. For Al-Qasim Qadhaa, which is situated in the southern part of the Babylon Governorate, Iraq, there is no landfill site in that area that conforms to the scientific criteria for selecting sites for landfill. For this reason, 15 criteria were adopted in this study ...

Mercury-bearing material enters municipal landfills from a wide array of sources, including fluorescent lights, batteries, electrical switches, thermometers, and general waste; however, the fate of mercury (Hg) in landfills has not been widely studied. Using automated flux chambers and downwind atmospheric sampling, we quantified the primary pathways of Hg vapor releases to the atmosphere at si...