Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2025

Simulating Temperature in a Soil Incubation Experiment
Published on: October 28, 2022
Prediction and control of elevated temperatures within landfills under aeration and recirculation based on the
Shao-Jie Wu1, Qi-Teng Zheng2, Yong Zhao2
1Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China; Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Aeration is an effective approach to sustainable landfilling but may lead to elevated temperatures within landfills, resulting in landfill fires or explosions. Therefore, aeration is usually combined with leachate recirculation to control the elevated temperatures within landfills. To predict landfill temperatures during aeration and recirculation, a local thermal non-equilibrium model is developed considering the heat generation of biodegradation, the heat removal due to evaporation and leachate-gas flow, and the effects of the capillary. The solver is implemented in OpenFOAM based on the finite volume method and validated against a waste-column experiment and an in-situ aeration test. The simulation results demonstrate that the assumption of local thermal equilibrium will distinctly overestimate the temperature, maximally by 15 °C in the studied case. The model is then used to simulate a typical aerobic landfill unit to investigate the formation of explosive gas mixtures and elevated temperatures under different operating conditions. The simulation results of gas composition suggest that aeration will not result in explosive gas within landfills. A reasonable recirculation method for temperature control with corresponding operating parameters under a group of values of aeration pressure (2000-4000 Pa) and recirculation rate (0.0001-0.0008 m/s) are proposed, which can provide some guides for the design of an aeration and recirculation combined system. For a given total volume of added leachate, a higher recirculation rate does not always mean better cooling, and the cooling effect of continuous recirculation is better than that of intermittent recirculation.
More Related Videos
11:25Identification and Quantification of Decomposition Mechanisms in Lithium-Ion Batteries; Input to Heat Flow Simulation for Modeling Thermal Runaway
Published on: March 7, 2022
04:35Author Spotlight: Simulation and Analysis of the Temperature Rise of Ring Main Unit Equipment
Published on: July 5, 2024
Related Concept Videos
Thermal expansion and Thermal stress: Problem Solving
To solve the problem, first, identify the known and unknown quantities. The initial length (L) of the bridge is 1275 m, the coefficient of linear expansion (α) for steel is 12 x 10-6/°C, and the change in...
Hot Weather Concreting
Mitigating the heat increase in concrete can be economically achieved by shading aggregate stockpiles to prevent heating from solar radiation,...
Mass Concreting
To reduce the risk of such cracking, the concrete mix may incorporate low-heat cement and pozzolans to reduce the temperature rise. Pre-cooled angular aggregates and water-reducing admixtures...
Temperature and Thermal Equilibrium
The concept of temperature has evolved from the common concepts of hot and cold. The scientific definition of temperature explains more than just our sense of hot and cold. Temperature is operationally defined as the quantity measured with a thermometer. Furthermore, temperature is...
Physical Methods for Controlling Microbial Growth: Temperature
Diversity of Archaea I