Abstract
The size and chemical composition of leachates migrating into the aquifer are dependent on the parameters of the waste and the storage conditions. Lysimeter studies allow us to determine the size and chemical composition of leachates as well as the leachate water balance. Lysimeter studies were conducted on a 230-L municipal waste sample for 6 months. During the tests, the specific electrolyte conductivity, pH, Eh, and temperature, as well as the chemical composition, microbiological analysis, and profiling of physiological population level using EcoPlate™ microarrays were measured in collected leachate samples. During the entire experiment, the amounts of inflow and outflow from lysimeters were measured. To assess the existence of significant differences in the chemical component concentrations in leachates, use of Principal Component Analysis was taken into account. The maximum EC value from leachate from the lysimeter was 33 mS/cm. High concentrations of ammonium ion (up to approx. 1400 mg dm−3), chlorides (up to approx. 6800 mg dm−3), and iron (up to approx. 31 mg dm−3) were observed in the effluents. The number of enterococci in May reached 53,000 cells/100 ml. By contrast, the number of these microorganisms was about 15,000 and 16,000 CFU/100 ml in January and April, respectively. Community-level physiological profiling indicates that the activity and functional diversity of microorganisms were higher in the leachate samples obtained in winter compared to effluents collected from lysimeters in spring.
Highlights
Many landfills do not have ground seals, so that pollutants leached from waste migrate to the ground and water environment
The lysimeter was filled with municipal waste with 20 03 01 European Waste Code with a moisture value equals to 29.3% from single-family houses, collected from landfill in Tychy–Urbanowice
The lysimeter experiment was conducted from December 2016 to May 2017
Summary
Many landfills do not have ground seals, so that pollutants leached from waste migrate to the ground and water environment. Due to the fact that the study of the groundwater hazard generated by leachate from existing landfill is quite expensive and the duration of such research can be relatively long, much cheaper, and shorter static or dynamic leaching tests are very often selected [40,41,42]. Lysimeter studies seem to be a promising alternative These tests are used both to assess the size of irrigation requirements for cereals [32, 39, 46] to demonstrate the effect of compost [10, 11, 33] and to simulate the conditions prevailing in landfill [3, 27, 35]. The lysimeter experiment allows us to determine the value of contamination loads and the dynamics of their elution [1, 35, 41]
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