Dual role of hydrolysis coefficient in modelling of bioreactors

Abstract

To the authors' knowledge, there is no published work, relating biodegradation and settlement of municipal solid waste (MSW) in bioreactor landfills together. The present mathematical model is developed to simulate the biodegradation of MSW in anaerobic bioreactor landfills and predict the strength of leachate in terms of volatile fatty acid (VFA). The hydrolysis rate constant (kh) has been found to be the pivot correlating the biodegradation model with the biodegradation-induced settlement model. A biochemical methane potential test was performed to determine the values of (kh). A MATLAB program is developed to implement the solution of both models. The numerical solution provides the simulation results of many parameters including carbon concentration of the solid waste, aqueous organic acids, VFA, methane, and waste settlement. The simulation results of the biological model and the biodegradation-induced settlement model have been verified with the results obtained through the experimental program and they showed good agreement.