Comparing field investigations with laboratory models to predict landfill leachate emissions
- Vienna University of Technology, Institute for Water Quality, Resources and Waste Management, Karlsplatz 13/226, A-1040 Vienna (Austria)
- Umweltbundesamt - Federal Environment Agency of Austria, Department for Contaminated Sites, Spittelauer Laende 5, A-1090 Vienna (Austria)
- Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Institute for Waste Resource Management, Harburger Schlossstrasse 36, D-21079 Hamburg (Germany)
Investigations into laboratory reactors and landfills are used for simulating and predicting emissions from municipal solid waste landfills. We examined water flow and solute transport through the same waste body for different volumetric scales (laboratory experiment: 0.08 m{sup 3}, landfill: 80,000 m{sup 3}), and assessed the differences in water flow and leachate emissions of chloride, total organic carbon and Kjeldahl nitrogen. The results indicate that, due to preferential pathways, the flow of water in field-scale landfills is less uniform than in laboratory reactors. Based on tracer experiments, it can be discerned that in laboratory-scale experiments around 40% of pore water participates in advective solute transport, whereas this fraction amounts to less than 0.2% in the investigated full-scale landfill. Consequences of the difference in water flow and moisture distribution are: (1) leachate emissions from full-scale landfills decrease faster than predicted by laboratory experiments, and (2) the stock of materials remaining in the landfill body, and thus the long-term emission potential, is likely to be underestimated by laboratory landfill simulations.
- OSTI ID:
- 21269331
- Journal Information:
- Waste Management, Vol. 29, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2008.12.022; PII: S0956-053X(08)00440-6; Copyright (c) 2008 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0956-053X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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