A QUANTITY-QUALITY MATHEMATICAL MODEL FOR MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE LANDFILL: MODEL CALIBRATION AND SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS

Abstract

Landfill leachate represents nowadays one of the most important issue related to the waste management cycle. Knowledge about leachate distribution and transport as well as fate of pollutants is fundamental for understanding the behavior of the landfill reactor. In the present study, a simple 1-D mathematical model was developed for the simulation of the vertical leachate fluxes throughout a landfill for MSW as well as the fate of inorganic pollutants within the landfill leachate pathway. The model was based on mass balance equations, which allowed to evaluate the moisture accumulation inside the landfill body as well as contaminant transport processes. The model enables to calculate the moisture content and the simulation of continuous moisture distribution was carried out on the basis of the theory of the vertically distributed unsaturated flow. The model has been applied to a real landfill considered as a case study. The observed results highlight that the proposed simple 1-D model can be a useful tool to analyze the landfill body as an unsaturated porous medium. The simulation results were in good agreement with the real leachate data provided by the landfill operator.