Landfill Settlement with Decomposition and Gas Generation
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Volume 131, Issue 9
Abstract
A one-dimensional multiphase numerical model is developed to simulate the vertical settlement involving liquid and gas flows in a deformable (settling) municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill. MSW is represented by a chemical composition, and a global stoichiometric reaction is used to estimate the maximum yield of gas generation. Following the general assumption accepted in the literature, the gas generated by waste decomposition is assumed to comprise of methane and carbon dioxide . The gas generation rate follows an exponentially decaying function of time. The gas generation model developed based on a first-order kinetic single-bioreactor approach includes the governing equations of gas migration, liquid flow, and landfill deformation. The Galerkin finite element method is used to solve the resulting equations. The model developed can be used to estimate the transient and ultimate settlements due to waste decomposition and gas generation in MSW landfills. The proposed model can estimate the waste porosity, gas pressure, liquid pressure, gas saturation, liquid saturation, and stress distributions in settling landfills. The results obtained for a deformable landfill are compared with a landfill having a rigid solid skeleton. Due to settlement, the depth of waste is 27% smaller in deformable landfills than that of the rigid ones.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 131 • Issue 9 • September 2005
Pages: 1311 - 1321
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: May 21, 2003
Accepted: Dec 28, 2004
Published online: Sep 1, 2005
Published in print: Sep 2005
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