In order to make predictions about biogas production of solid waste landfills, numerical models are commonly used? Which freeware models have you successfully used on the design of real landfills?
Hi Rodrigo, You can use LandGEM: Landfill Gas Emissions Model, developed by US EPA for modeling methane emissions from Landfills. This is a freeware and is available in spreadsheet/excel format. Check this link:
http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/appcd/combustion/cec_models_dbases.html
In the first step you should obtain the general formulation of solid wastes which are disposed in the landfill. General form of this formulation is: CaHbOcNd. In this formulation C is carbon, H is hydrogen, O is oxygen and N is nitrogen. General formulation of solid wastes should be calculated based on laboratory experiments. In the second step use following chemical equation after balancing to predict amount of methane, carbon dioxide and ammonia (Eq. 1).
Organic matter (CaHbOcNd) + H2O -------------> CH4 + CO2 + NH3 (Eq. 1)
Above mentioned chemical equation should be balanced. In order to balance above chemical equation, Eq. 2 can be applied.
CaHbOcNd + (4a-b-2c+3d/4) H2O ------------> ( 4a+b-2c-3d/8) CH4+ (4a-b+2c+3d/8) CO2 + dNH3 (Eq. 2)
where, C is carbon, H is hydrogen, O is oxygen, N is nitrogen and a,b, c,d are constant coefficients in general formulation of solid waste (CaHbOcNd). The above mention method is the simplest approach to predict amount of different gasses which are emitted from anaerobic microbial activities in landfills.
In addition to US EPA's LandGEM, the Landfill Methane Outreach Program, which is led by US EPA, has developed a multitude of landfill gas production models for other regions/countries of the world: http://www.epa.gov/lmop/publications-tools/index.html Many of these models are built on the same basic first-order decay principle used in LandGEM.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Agriculture