Effect of Changing Unit Weight and Decomposition on Unsaturated Hydraulics of Municipal Solid Waste in Bioreactor Landfills
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 5
Abstract
The effects of compression and decomposition on the water retention curve (WRC) and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity () of municipal solid waste (MSW) were evaluated in the laboratory and field. Laboratory measurements of the WRC and were made using the multistep outflow (MSO) method. Numerical inversion of data collected during the Deer Track Bioreactor Experiment (DTBE) was used to estimate field-scale unsaturated hydraulic properties. For the MSW tested in this study, data indicated that increasing dry unit weight resulted in an increase of the air-entry suction. Increasing levels of decomposition had the opposite effect, reducing air-entry suction for MSW at constant dry unit weight. Multiple mechanisms likely resulted in the observed changes in air-entry suction, including reduction in pore size during compression and changes in overall MSW hydrophobicity during decomposition. At field-scale, air-entry suction tended to remain constant as MSW compressed and decomposed simultaneously indicating that the two processes, which had opposite effects in the laboratory, also may have opposing effects the field. For fresh MSW, van Genuchten’s , which is inversely related to the variance of the pore size of a porous medium, ranged between 1.3 and 2.5 and decreased as the dry unit weight increased in laboratory-scale tests. For decomposed MSW, ranged from 1.1 to 1.3 and did not vary systematically with dry unit weight. This indicated that for degraded MSW, the variance of the pore-size distribution did not change substantially with increasing dry unit weight. The value of decreased with increasing dry unit weight for MSW in this study, consistent with observations for saturated hydraulic conductivity in MSW. However, tended to increase in laboratory tests with increasing levels of decomposition at constant dry unit weight, consistent with observed increases in void ratio. At field scale, observed changes in varied consistently with changes in saturated hydraulic conductivity as decomposition and densification occurred simultaneously.
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Data Availability Statement
All data and/or models in this study may be made available by request to the corresponding author. All data utilized from the DTBE are published in the supplemental data section of Bareither et al. (2012b).
Acknowledgments
Financial support for this study was provided by the University of Wisconsin–North Carolina State University bioreactor partnership (www.bioreactorpartnership.org), which was sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant No. EEC-0538500) and a consortium of industry partners (CH2MHill, Geosyntec Consultants, Republic Services, Veolia Environmental Services, Waste Connections, and Waste Management) through the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Innovation program. Additional appreciation is extended to Christopher Bareither (Colorado State University) for field and laboratory technical support.
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Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 146 • Issue 5 • May 2020
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©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: May 24, 2019
Accepted: Nov 20, 2019
Published online: Mar 9, 2020
Published in print: May 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Aug 9, 2020
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