Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Ontario’s Solid Waste Landfills: Assessment of Improvement Scenarios
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 145, Issue 8
Abstract
Actual data of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Ontario’s large landfills were compared with data generated by a first-order decay model. Different scenarios were developed and compared based on their associated GHG emissions. The life-cycle modeling was made for municipal solid waste (MSW) landfilled until 2015, and the environmental aspects were evaluated for a 100-year period after disposal. The data utilized in the calculations to model the municipal solid waste landfilling scenarios make extensive use of site-specific data from the landfills. The assessment of different scenarios showed that reduction of landfilled organic waste can lead to significant reduction in the potential environmental loads with respect to global warming when compared with the current MSW landfilling. Conventional landfilling with gas collection for electricity generation showed a better performance than the flaring scenario. Landfill gas collection and power generation resulted in a reduction in GHG emissions of up to 78% relative to the methane flaring scenario. Utilization of soil top covers to oxidize methane (use of methanotrophs) has been demonstrated to drastically reduce environmental burdens.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change for providing all requested data of the solid waste landfills in the province.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 145 • Issue 8 • August 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 1, 2018
Accepted: Jan 9, 2019
Published online: Jun 8, 2019
Published in print: Aug 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Nov 8, 2019
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