Biodegradation and Landfill Settlement
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New Jersey Institute of Technology Digital Commons @ NJIT Theses Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 10-31-1996 Biodegradation and landfill settlement Shailesh Pisolkar New Jersey Institute of Technology Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses Part of the Environmental Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Pisolkar, Shailesh, "Biodegradation and landfill settlement" (1996). Theses. 1061. https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/1061 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Digital Commons @ NJIT. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ NJIT. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Copyright Warning & Restrictions The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. 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Please Note: The author retains the copyright while the New Jersey Institute of Technology reserves the right to distribute this thesis or dissertation Printing note: If you do not wish to print this page, then select “Pages from: first page # to: last page #” on the print dialog screen The Van Houten library has removed some of the personal information and all signatures from the approval page and biographical sketches of theses and dissertations in order to protect the identity of NJIT graduates and faculty. ABSTRACT BIODEGRADATION AND LANDFILL SETTLEMENT by Shailesh Pisolkar The most widely used method for the final disposal of solid waste is landfilling, which is also economical and simpler than most other disposal systems. Long term settlement in a landfill occurs mainly due to biodegradation of the refuse which is a very slow microbiological process. However, if the rate of biodegradation is enhanced, it may be possible to achieve early stabilization, faster settlement, consequently more capacity of the landfill to handle waste. The objective of this research is to study the effects of enhanced biodegradation on settlement and to compare these results to other models used for predicting landfill settlement. To accomplish this, a laboratory scale confinement cell was set up using a typical municipal solid waste to study settlement and biodegradation. Results from this study indicate that secondary settlement is linear with respect to logarithm of time and that biodegradation does not have any effect on settlement over a short duration of time, but is predominant over extended periods. BIODEGRADATION AND LANDFILL SETTLEMENT by Shailesh Pisolkar A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Environmental Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering October 1996 APPROVAL PAGE BIODEGRADATION AND LANDFILL SETTLEMENT Shailesh Pisolkar Dr. Raj P. Khera, Thesis Advisor t Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, NJIT Dr. Taha Marhaba, Committee Member Date Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, NJIT Dr. .gtCIhi M nee, Committee Member Enviro ental Chemist, Civil and Environmental Engineering, NJIT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Author: Shailesh Pisolkar Degree: Master of Science Date: October 1996 Undergraduate and Graduate Education: • Master of Science in Environmental Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 1996 • Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, 1993 Major: Environmental Engineering To my beloved family v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to express sincere gratitude to my research supervisor, Dr. Raj P. Khera, for his guidance, valuable and countless resources, and moral support throughout this study. I am grateful to Dr. Taha Marhaba for serving as a committee member as well as providing me a lot of information about the subject and responding to all my queries to my fullest satisfaction. Special thanks to Dr. Sudhi Mukherjee who not only served as committee member, providing timely help, suggestions, insight and intuition, but also gave me support encouragement and reassurance, and assisted me in my research. I appreciate Dr. D. Raghu's help in providing me with the apparatus used in this study, and also for his expert assistance in all issues of landfills. Thanks to Mr. B. Swamy for his help in all the experimental work in the Soils Laboratory. And finally, my colleagues in the Geoenvironmental Laboratory deserve a recognition for their support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Research Objectives 2 2 BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 4 2.1 Biodegradation 5 2.2 Landfill Settlement 6 2.3 Models for Predicting Settlement 9 2.3.1 Gibson and Lo Model 10 2.3.2 Power Creep Law 11 2.3.3 Yen and Scanlon Model 12 2.3.4 Sowers Model 12 2.3.5 Arntz and Raghu (NJIT) Model 13 3 METHODOLOGY 15 3.1 Experimental Set Up 15 3.2 Properties of the Waste 20 3.3 Waste Composition of the Combined Waste .20 4 OBSERVATIONS MADE FOR THE CELL 22 4.1 Settlement 22 4.2 Gases 26 4.3 Leachates .26 5 SETTLEMENT CALCULATIONS USING VARIOUS MODELS 31 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued) Chapter Page 5.1 Gibson and Lo Model .31 5.2 Power Creep Law 31 5.3 Yen and Scanlon Model 32 5.4 Sowers Model 33 5.5 Arntz and Raghu (NJIT) Model 33 6 DECOMPOSITION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 36 6.1 Decomposition of Waste .36 6.1.1 Decomposition Based on Amount of Gas Generated .36 6.1.2 Decomposition Based on Change in Total Volatile Solids .39 6.2 Settlement Results 43 6.3 Gas Production Results 44 7 CONCLUSIONS 45 8 SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 46 APPENDIX A DETERMINATION OF VARIOUS GEOTECHNICAL PROPERTIES OF WASTE 47 APPENDIX B SETTLEMENT CALCULATION USING VARIOUS MODELS 51 B.1 Gibson and Lo Model 51 B.2 Power Creep Law .52 B,3 Yen and Scanlon Model 53 B.4 Sowers Model 53 TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued) Chapter Page APPENDIX C CALCULATION OF GAS PRODUCED 55 APPENDIX D THE ROOT TIME METHOD ADOPTED FOR THIS STUDY 57 APPENDIX E COMPARISON OF SETTLEMENT USING VARIOUS MODELS 59 APPENDIX F DATA FOR DETERMINING 1' VALUES 62 REFERENCES 63 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 3.1 Experimental set up 17 3.2 Details of the cell 19 4.1 Experimental data plotted against time 24 4.2 Log time-strain curve used to determine the rate of secondary settlement 25 4.3 Cumulative gas production for the cell 27 4.4 Daily gas production from the cell 28 4.5 Methane generation pattern from the test cell 30 5.1 Comparison of settlements determined from various models with the experimental data 34 6.1 Comparison of first order decomposition and secondary settlement for k=0.0512 40 6.2 Comparison of first order decomposition and secondary settlement for k=0.1515 41 A.1 Phase diagram for the waste .48 D.1 Using the Root time method for determining time for primary consolidation ..... 58 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 3.1 Properties of waste 20 3.2 Waste composition 21 4.1 Settlement of data obtained from the experiment 23 4.2 Details of methane produced from the test cell 29 6.1 Comparison of initial and final values of TVS .42 A.1 Pycnometer readings 47 E.1 Settlement data for various models 59 F.1 Data to find 'lc' values 62 xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Scarcity of land is not a new problem because of the kind of development we are experiencing in the last few decades of this century. Municipal landfills usually occupy large spaces of land, when there already is a crunch of available land. Also, the amount of waste needed to be disposed off seems to be endless. Landfilling in probably the most inexpensive way of handling Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Hence the capacity of a landfill needs to be increased. The municipal refuse in a landfill settles initially because of the expulsion of air and/or water in the pore spaces of the waste, and over a longer period because of biotransformation of the waste into gases and leachate, which results in settlement. The settlement due to biodegradation goes on up to 40 years after the closure of the landfill. If it is possible to accelerate the biodegradation, more landfill capacity could be achieved for the landfill. The landfill can be considered as an anaerobic bioreactor. By studying how biodegradation occurs fastest, such conditions can be applied to a landfill and early settlement could be achieved. Settlement values as a function of time can be predicted, and this gives an estimate about landfill capacity. Another advantage of accelerated biodegradation is to prevent groundwater pollution problems because of fractured and leaking liner systems in a landfill worn out by time. If boidegradation is achieved early, the gases and leachates can be removed effectively from the landfill when the venting and liner system is still young. In this study, a landfill test cell developed using typical MSW composition. The aim was to study landfill behavior patterns and to obtain experimental data of settlement 1 2 and biodegradation. The test cell was kept in simulated landfill conditions and provision was made for accelerated biodegradation.