Estimation of landfill emission lifespan using process oriented modeling

Depending on the particular pollutants emitted, landfills may require service activities lasting from hundreds to thousands of years. Flexible tools allowing long-term predictions of emissions are of key importance to determine the nature and expected duration of maintenance and post-closure activities. A highly capable option represents predictions based on models and verified by experiments that are fast, flexible and allow for the comparison of various possible operation scenarios in order to find the most appropriate one. The intention of the presented work was to develop a experimentally verified multi-dimensional predictive model capable of quantifying and estimating processes taking place in landfill sites where coupled process description allows precise time and space resolution. This constitutive 2-dimensional model is based on the macromechanical theory of porous media (TPM) for a saturated thermo-elastic porous body. The model was used to simulate simultaneously occurring processes: organic phase transition, gas emissions, heat transport, and settlement behavior on a long time scale for municipal solid waste deposited in a landfill. The relationships between the properties (composition, pore structure) of a landfill and the conversion and multi-phase transport phenomena inside it were experimentally determined. In this paper, we present both the theoretical background of the model and the results of the simulations at one single point as well as in a vertical landfill cross section.