A decision support tool for landfill methane generation and gas collection

Area of Science:

• Environmental Engineering
• Biochemical Engineering
• Waste Management

Background:

• Landfill methane generation is complex and lacks effective decision support tools.
• Existing methods do not adequately simplify biochemical processes for landfill managers.
• Assessing landfill gas production performance and identifying issues requires a dedicated tool.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel decision support tool (DST) for enhancing methane generation in landfills.
• To provide landfill decision-makers with simplified information on biochemical processes and gas production.
• To identify potential remedies for suboptimal methane generation at individual landfill sites.

Main Methods:

• Developed a DST calculating two performance scores: methane output and landfill gas indicators.
• Methane output score compares actual rates against the LandGEM model predictions.
• Landfill gas indicator score assesses key parameters (moisture, temperature, pH, etc.) using multi-criteria analysis and analytical hierarchical process.

Main Results:

• The DST was tested on five UK landfill sites over one year (2012).
• Results demonstrated the tool's ability to interpret performance across varied generation levels (good, average, poor).
• The tool successfully identified problem areas and provided recommendations for methane output enhancement.

Conclusions:

• The DST enhances site-specific understanding of methane generation for landfill managers.
• It enables tracking, comparison, and ranking of landfill performance over time.
• The tool effectively identifies areas needing intervention to optimize methane production.