ABSTRACT HAO, ZISU. Understanding and Predicting Temperatures in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills (Under the Direction of Dr

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ABSTRACT HAO, ZISU. Understanding and Predicting Temperatures in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills (Under the Direction of Dr ABSTRACT HAO, ZISU. Understanding and Predicting Temperatures in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills (Under the direction of Dr. Morton A. Barlaz and Dr. Joel J. Ducoste). Landfilling is generally the most cost-effective approach for municipal solid waste disposal. However, there have been several reports of municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills that experienced temperatures in excess of 80−100 ℃. Elevated temperatures have caused damage to landfill infrastructures and pose environmental risks. Although aerobic and anaerobic reactions have been recognized as heat generation sources within landfills, the causes of excessive heat accumulation in elevated temperature landfills remain unclear. The objective of this study was to develop a mathematical model to predict heat generation, accumulation and propagation from biotic and abiotic reactions that occur in MSW landfills. Initially, a batch reactor model was developed to identify an appropriate mathematical approach for the representation of heat generation sources including aerobic and anaerobic biological reactions, anaerobic metal corrosion, acid-base reactions, ash hydration and carbonation, and pyrolysis. In the batch reactor model, the landfill temperature and reactant concentrations do not vary spatially within the landfill which represents an important limitation in representing landfills. The predicted maximum temperature associated with biological reactions ranged from 62 to 69 ℃ for cases with and without heat loss, respectively. Inclusion of ash hydration and carbonation, and Al corrosion (1.7% Al and 100% corroded area) resulted in temperature rises of 14 and 26 ℃ in 10 years, respectively. A transient three-dimensional finite element model (FEM-3DM) was developed to describe spatially dependent heat transfer in landfills. The FEM-3DM incorporates gas-liquid-heat reactive transfer in a landfill with biotic and abiotic reactions and spatially-dependent heat transfer processes (e.g. conduction and condensation). Model simulations showed a convex temperature profile in the landfill body and the maximum temperature occurs at a depth of 50 m for an 80 m landfill. The simulation results also showed that the 80 m landfill reached higher maximum temperatures than the 40 m landfill. The model was useful in exploring the impact of three disposal scenarios involving ash; segregation of ash in the center of the landfill, segregation in a corner, and mixed with the MSW. The fraction of the waste predicted to exceed 65 C was 0, 0.08, and 0.11 for the base case (MSW only), ash-in-corner, and ash-in-center scenarios, respectively. Thus, the impacted waste volume associated with the corner and center scenarios are sufficiently close that operational considerations will likely dictate ash placement. Simulations predicted that the disposal of 10 to 20% ash can result in 49 to 81% of the waste mass exceeding 65 C, which suggests that a segregation strategy has merit so to minimize the volume of MSW that experiences an elevated temperature (65 C). By hydrating the waste prior to burial, about 40% of the total energy can be eliminated prior to burial; this results in a reduction of the maximum temperature of ~40 C. Multiple site-specific considerations will dictate whether the ash is hydrated by the waste generator or at a landfill. Similarly, the presence of Al had a significant impact on waste temperatures. Finally, the model can be applied to develop optimal management and engineering strategies to prevent excess heat accumulation. © Copyright 2020 Zisu Hao All Rights Reserved Understanding and Predicting Temperatures in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills by Zisu Hao A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Civil Engineering Raleigh, North Carolina 2020 APPROVED BY: ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Morton A. Barlaz Dr. Joel J. Ducoste Committee Co-Chair Committee Co-Chair ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Fanxing Li Dr. Yuntian Zhu BIOGRAPHY Zisu Hao grew up in Kaifeng, China. In 2007, Mr. Hao received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT), Beijing, China. From 2007 to 2014 Mr. Hao worked as a graduate researcher under the direction of Dr. Zihao Wang and Dr. Weidong Zhang in the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering at BUCT, where he received a Doctoral Degree in Chemical Engineering. In Fall 2014 he began graduate studies in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, and worked as a graduate researcher from 2014 to 2015 on the quantification of grease interceptor effluent fatty acids under the direction of Dr. Ducoste. Beginning in 2015, Mr. Hao started research on the topic of landfill modeling and served as a teaching assistant in 2019. His graduate course work has focused on computational fluid dynamics and solid waste management, under the direction of Dr. Barlaz and Dr. Ducoste. His dissertation focuses on modeling to understand heat accumulation, transfer, and propagation in municipal solid waste landfills. ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Qian, who has been a constant source of inspiration, motivation, encouragement, and support throughout my life. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Barlaz. His wealth of knowledge, guidance, encouragement, and support allowed me to reach higher levels of achievement in my research career than I would have been capable of otherwise. By his example, he has shown me what an outstanding researcher/professor/person should be. I am extremely grateful for having Dr. Ducoste as my secondary mentor throughout my graduate career at NC State. His patience, enthusiasm, and motivation have deeply inspired me. I am very grateful to him for offering me the chance to broaden my horizons in multiple research fields. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr. Fanxing Li and Dr. Yuntian Zhu for generously offering their time, guidance, and brilliant comments and suggestions, thanks to you. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Mohammad Pour-Ghaz for providing me insightful comments during our group meetings, to Dr. Mei Sun for helping me with model parameterization, to Dr. Castellano and Mr. Jake Rhoads for helping me build experimental setups, and to Drs. Detlef Knappe, Francis de los Reyes, and Jack Edwards for their wonderful lectures. I would like to thank graduate students/friends for all the fun we have had in the last several years: Dr. Florentino De La Cruz, Asmita Narode, Sierra Schupp, Qiwen Cheng, Juan Fausto Ortiz, Arpit Sardana, Joe Weaver, Yi Chun Lai, Amanda Karam, Amie McElroy, Zachary Hopkins, Chuhui Zhang, Samrin Kusum, Divya Malyala, Diyuan Wang, and Yixuan Wang. I would like to express my special thanks to my lovely family, my wife Qian, my daughter Mira, my son Maxen, my parents and parents-in-law gave me the everlasting confidence, support and encouragement to complete my degree and to pursue my dreams. You are amazing. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1. Introduction and Research Objectives ............................................................................1 Chapter 2. Literature Review ...........................................................................................................7 2.1 Current research related to ETLFs ................................................................................... 7 2.2 Landfill models with heat and/or mass transfer ............................................................... 9 2.3 References ...................................................................................................................... 15 Chapter 3. Heat Generation and Accumulation in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills (Env. Sci. & Technol. 2017, 51, 12434−12442) ...............................................................................19 3.1 Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 19 3.2 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 19 3.3 Model development ....................................................................................................... 21 3.4 Model parameterization and input assumptions ............................................................ 32 3.5 Results and discussion ................................................................................................... 33 3.6 Incorporation of pyrolysis .............................................................................................. 41 3.7 Implications and future work ......................................................................................... 45 3.8 Supporting information .................................................................................................. 45 3.9 References .....................................................................................................................
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