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LANDFILL BIOREACTOR PERFORMANCE, SECOND INTERIM REPORT
Citation:
TOLAYMAT, T. M. LANDFILL BIOREACTOR PERFORMANCE, SECOND INTERIM REPORT. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-07/060, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
A bioreactor landfill is a landfill that is operated in a manner that is expected to increase the rate and extent of waste decomposition, gas generation, and settlement compared to a traditional landfill. This Second Interim Report was prepared to provide an interpretation of field data collected as part of a multi-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and Waste Management, Inc. (WM). The CRADA was established to evaluate the performance of landfill bioreactor units at the WM Outer Loop Landfill, located in Louisville, Kentucky. This report follows the September 2003 U.S. EPA document Landfills as Bioreactors: Research at the Outer Loop Landfill, Louisville, Kentucky, First Interim Report (i.e., the First Interim Report, EPA/600/R-03/097), which presented a complete description of the landfill study sites and the data collection procedures. The Outer Loop Landfill Bioreactor (OLLB) project considers solid waste decomposition, moisture balance, landfill gas generation, and leachate quality to evaluate the effect of bioreactor operations on municipal solid waste (MSW) decomposition. Three types of landfill cells were evaluated in the OLLB study: (i) a Control cell, in which no liquids were added; (ii) a cell in which liquids were added after the cell had been completely filled with waste (i.e., the Retrofit cell); and (iii) a cell in which liquids and air were added as the waste was placed in the landfill (i.e., the As-Built cell). The monitoring data were sequentially evaluated to identify trends in solid waste decomposition, moisture retention, landfill gas quality and quantity, and leachate quality. One must recognize the limitation of data presented in this report in establishing long-term trends in the operation of bioreactor landfills.