An experimental study on landfill technology to produce an alternative source of energy from organic waste

Abstract

Municipal solid waste (MSW) alludes to waste produced from residential, commercial, institution and public parks. The MSW is basically treated in three different methods: thermal conversion, biological treatment and landfilling. Landfilling is the process which used in this paper to treat the MSW. This paper aims to design and construct lab scale landfill model to provide a suitable technical solution for energy recovery in Khartoum using organic waste, and additionally to determine the amount of methane gas that can be produced from this landfill model. The methodology of experiment was carried out by digging the land to create a hole with dimensions of (2 m x 1.5 m x 2 m). The next step was construction of the first class of insulation layer recompacted clay. A protective layer was constructed and welded to prevent the leakage of waste water. Leachate collection system insulated was constructed and geotextile layer was added above it. Then, a manual collecting of food waste was done and the creation of the waste layer was carried out. Setup final closure layer was done which contains of geotextile. The landfill was filled in landfill parts to reach the ultimate height as soon as possible. Portable gas analyzer was used to measure CH4 concentrations by volume. The measuring process showed that the concentrations of CH4 vary in range 0.1 % to 0.3%. The results showed that the landfill technology could produce methane gas from organic waste and this indicated that organic waste can be an alternative source of energy.