Analysis of solid-liquid-gas interactions in landfilled municipal solid waste by a bio-hydro-mechanical coupled model

Abstract

Based on first-order kinetics of hydrolysis process, biodegradation of municipal solid waste (MSW) is assumed to obey a first-order decay equation which can take the direct effect of water content on biodegradation into account. Hydraulic model is an unsaturated-saturated flow model using mass conservation equations for fluids. Mechanical compression of MSW is expressed by a stress-age coupled compression model. Through above models, a one-dimensional (1-D) bio-hydro-mechanical coupled model is established to analyze solid-liquid-gas interactions in landfilled MSW. Values of all the model parameters for current typical Chinese MSW are determined. Numerical analysis of a hypothetical waste sample in a closed system shows that gas pressure and gas concentration is extremely large which might cause severe gas explosion problem. Total gas production is about 267.0 m3 per wet ton of fresh wastes. For another hypothetical landfilled MSW layer, the coupled model predicts a dissipation of gas pressure during passive gas collection process. Annual gas production is large at the beginning of biodegradation, and then decreases with time. Surface settlement of the wastes increases quickly initially and then becomes stable with a compression strain of about 0.32 after 20 years.