Modelling leachate quality and quantity in municipal solid waste landfills

2004-04-01
Yildiz, ED
Ünlü, Kahraman
Rowe, RK
The operational phase of landfills may last for 20 years or more. Significant changes in leachate quality and generation rate may occur during this operational period. A mathematical model has been developed to simulate the landfill leachate behaviour and distributions of moisture and leachate constituents through the landfill, taking into consideration the effects of time-dependent landfill development on the hydraulic characteristics of waste and composition of leachate. The model incorporates governing equations that describe processes influencing the leachate production and biochemical processes taking place during the stabilization of wastes, including leachate flow, dissolution, acidogenesis and methanogenesis. To model the hydraulic property changes occurring during the development stage of the landfills, a conceptual modelling approach was proposed. This approach considers the landfill to consist of cells or columns of cells, which are constructed at different times, and considers each cell in the landfill to consist of several layers. Each layer is assumed to be a completely mixed reactor containing uniformly distributed solid waste, moisture, gases and micro-organisms. The use of the proposed conceptual model enables the incorporation of the spatial changes in hydraulic properties of the landfill into the model and also makes it possible to predict the spatial and temporal distributions of moisture and leachate constituents. The model was calibrated and partially verified using leachate data from Keele Valley Landfill in Ontario, Canada and data obtained from the literature. Ranges of values were proposed for model parameters applicable for real landfill conditions.
WASTE MANAGEMENT & RESEARCH

Suggestions

A model for optimal operation of land-treatment sites for oily wastes
Ünlü, Kahraman (SAGE Publications, 2001-06-01)
Land treatment as a disposal technology has been extensively used for the disposal of oily wastes. Effective management of land treatment sites require optimal operation of the system in order to achieve the fastest and most complete degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons without contamination of the environment. This paper describes a model that can be used for optimising the operation of land treatment sites for oily wastes. The model is composed of system simulator and optimisation submodels. Conceptually...
Modeling natural attenuation of petroleum hydrocarbons (btex) in heterogeneous aquifers
Uçankuş, Tuğba; Ünlü, Kahraman; Department of Environmental Engineering (2005)
Natural Attenuation can be an effective cleanup option for remediation of Groundwater contamination by BTEX. One of the important aspects of the methodology that has been recognized recently is that mass removal rates, the most important parameters used to determine effectiveness of the methodology, is controlled by groundwater flow regime, which to a large extent controlled by aquifer heterogeneity. Considering this recognition, the primary objective of this research is to quantitatively describe the relat...
Identification of management strategies and generation factors for spent lead acid battery recovery plant wastes in Turkey
Çelebi, Sarp; Yetiş, Ülkü; Ünlü, Kahraman (SAGE Publications, 2019-03-01)
The recovery of spent or waste lead acid batteries is important both for the management of lead input to the environment and to meet the lead demand of the market in a more energy and cost effective manner than primary production. As an important producer of lead acid batteries for the Middle Eastern and Eastern European market, Turkey seems to meet 22%-52% of its total lead demand by waste lead acid battery recovery. In this study, the wastes from Turkish waste lead acid battery recovery plants are identif...
Transport of metals leaching from land-disposed oil field wastes
Ünlü, Kahraman (SAGE Publications, 1998-12-01)
The potential for groundwater contamination by metals leaching from land-disposed oil field exploration and production (E&P) wastes is an environmental concern. In this study a geochemical transport model is adopted to consider multispecies metal migration. Objectives are to characterize the chemical composition of E&P wastes, to evaluate the mobility and pollution potential of metals in E&P wastes and to investigate the utility of simplified modelling approaches. A chemical transport model coupling a hydro...
Identification of waste management strategies and waste generation factors for thermal power plant sector wastes in Turkey
Demir, Cansu; Yetiş, Ülkü; Ünlü, Kahraman (SAGE Publications, 2019-03-01)
Thermal power plants are of great environmental importance in terms of the huge amounts of wastes that they produce. Although there are process-wise differences among these energy production systems, they all depend on the logic of burning out a fuel and obtaining thermal energy to rotate the turbines. Depending on the process modification and the type of fuel burned, the wastes produced in each step of the overall process may change. In this study, the most expected process and non-process wastes stemming ...
Citation Formats
E. Yildiz, K. Ünlü, and R. Rowe, “Modelling leachate quality and quantity in municipal solid waste landfills,” WASTE MANAGEMENT & RESEARCH, pp. 78–92, 2004, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/36957.