Percolate production and precipitation data for a full-scale landfill in operation measured over a 13-year period were used to evaluate the impact and importance of the hydrological conditions of landfill sections on the percolate production rates. Both active (open) and closed landfill sections were included in the evaluation. A simple top cover model requiring a minimum of input data was used...

There is considerable interest today in the so-called “biocell” approach toward municipal solid waste (MSW) landfilling in which leachate is introduced back into the landfill. This approach reduces the cost of leachate management and is said to reduce/eliminate the potential for long term landfill gas production and groundwater pollution. However, a critical review of the typical approach being...

The Australian Community Psychologist Volume 20 No 1 June 2008 The number of separate kerbside dryrecycling and organic waste collection systems operated by UK Local Authorities (LAs) has risen sharply as a result of the implementation of the European Landfill Directive (99/31/EC) into UK legislation on the 16th July 2001, concerns over remaining available landfill void space, and statutory rec...

The microbial conversion of lignocellulosic biomass for biofuel production represents a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. However, the discovery of new microbial enzymes with high activity is critical for improving biomass conversion processes. While attempts to identify superior lignocellulose-degrading enzymes have focused predominantly on the animal gut, biomass-degrading communities in...

Studies concerning landfill mining have historically focused on reclamation of land space and landfill remediation. A limited number of studies, however, have evaluated landfill mining combined with resource recovery, most of them being pilot studies or projects with little emphasis on resource extraction. This implies that many uncertainties remain related to landfill mining. With a growing in...

This study aims to investigate the impact of MSW landfill on the contamination of phthalate esters (PAEs) in nearby environment. Landfill leachate, surface water, groundwater and soil profile samples were collected from a MSW landfill area in Wuhan, China. Contents of 16 PAEs were detected for each sample using gas chromatography method. Results showed that landfill had an obvious effect on the...

A demonstration pilot with seven anaerobic landfill simulators (LSRs) was used to study the impact of temperature in the range of 20 46 °C on long-term landfill emissions, characteristics and tendencies, because of an evident lack of knowledge in this area. The pilot ran more than 1400 days. Higher temperatures accelerated the waste degradation and gas generation, but also resulted in higher le...

Designing environmentally sound landfills is a challenging engineering task due to complex interactions of numerous design variables; such as landfill size, waste characteristics, and site hydrogeology. Decision support systems (DSS) can be utilized to handle these complex interactions and to aid in a performance-based landfill design by coupling system simulation models (SSM). The aim of this ...

The last few decades have seen dramatic growth in the scale of production and the use of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) as flame retardants. Consequently, PBDEs such as BDE -28, -47, -66, -71, -75, -77, -85, -99, -100, -119, -138, -153, -154, and -183 have been detected in various environmental matrices. Generally, in South Africa, once the products containing these chemicals have outli...

Workers and operators in sanitary landfill sites face the health risk due to the constant exposure to the toxic solid, liquid, and gaseous by-products of the waste materials. One solution to this problem is automation technology that can increase productivity and quality as well as safety. But, developing an automated system for landfill operations is usually a complex task due to the dynamic a...