Evolution of saturated hydraulic conductivity with compression and degradation for municipal solid waste

Municipal solid waste (MSW) specimens were created from synthetic fresh MSW degraded in a laboratory scale enhanced degradation reactor. The degree of degradation and saturated hydraulic conductivity k_s were measured to study the effects of compression and degradation on k_s of MSW. The degree of degradation was characterized through the ratio of cellulose content to lignin content (i.e., C/L) and the loss ratio of volatile solid (i.e., DOD). k_s of MSW specimens with different degrees of degradation was measured through triaxial permeameter tests under different confining pressures. It was found that, when the degradation time increased from 0month to 18months, k_s decreased less than 1 order of magnitude for specimens with the same porosity (i.e., n=0.63 or 0.69). However, for specimens with the same degradation time, the decrease of k_s could reach 2 orders of magnitude with n decreasing from 0.8 to 0.6. It indicates that compression has much greater influence on the reduction of k_s than that of degradation. Based on the Kozeny-Carman model and first-order kinetics, a prediction model related to n and C/L (or DOD) of MSW was proposed to analyze the evolution of k_s with compression and biodegradation. The methods to determine the values of model parameters were also proposed.