Influence of High-Permeability Layers for Enhancing Landfill Gas Capture and Reducing Fugitive Methane Emissions from Landfills
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 135, Issue 3
Abstract
Gas collection systems of various designs have been used to control landfill gas emissions, which can be problematic, particularly before installation of final landfill covers. In this work, an innovative gas collection system that includes a permeable layer near the top surface of landfills was evaluated for enhancing capture of landfill gas and reducing fugitive methane emissions. A computational model that accounts for advective and diffusive fluxes of multiple gas components was used to evaluate the efficiency of this new design for intermediate landfill covers. The utility of the high-permeability gas-conductive layer was illustrated for several conditions of interest including varying refuse permeability, varying degrees of permeability anisotropy, and temporal atmospheric pressure changes. Simulations showed that the permeable layer decreased methane emissions by 43% when the horizontal to vertical permeability ratio for refuse was and the domain average , while reductions in methane emissions decreased to 17% for the same anisotropy but with . With this design, barometric pressure changes did not significantly affect oxygen intrusion or methane emission rates.
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Acknowledgments
The writers thank Dr. Liqing Li and Dr. Curt Oldenburg for assistance in modeling gas transport with TMVOC, and Dr. Ulrich Mayer and Dr. Sergi Molins for helpful discussions on modeling gas diffusion in biocovers. Computational facilities at the University of Delaware Center for Applied Coastal Research were used in this work. Financial support was provided by the US Department of Energy under Cooperative Agreement No. DOEDE-FC26-05NT42432 and the California Energy Commission.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 135 • Issue 3 • March 2009
Pages: 138 - 146
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 12, 2007
Accepted: Oct 28, 2008
Published online: Mar 1, 2009
Published in print: Mar 2009
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