Critical approach to the landfill aeration concept

Although the landfill aeration offers many benefits for the environment, there are also some unresolved problems, which should be mentioned. What is more, not all of the consequences of waste aeration have been thoroughly understood. 

Ritzkowski (2011) pays attention to uncertainty regarding the actual amoimt of N O emissions. Aerobic conditions favour the generation of this gas, which has a high GWP about 298 (in 100 years). Although, the increase of N O production was not observed in field scale study during the landfill aeration (Powell et al. 2006), the lab-scale experiment showed much higher 

Another issue that is worth mentioning is the lack of generally accepted criteria on which the assessment of waste stabilization success could be based. Although, a number of pilot projects related to landfill aeration have already been implemented, such a rules have not yet been developed. Ritzkowski Stegmann (2013) have proposed 6 criteria to determine the measures of landfill aeration completion (Table 4.3). 

An operational problem that occurs in low pressure aeration solutions regards the difficulties in maintenance of the aerobic conditions inside the entire waste mass. The anaerobic areas were observed even at the low moisture content of waste equal to 33% (Yazdani et al. 2010), which should definitely favour the gas migration in porous medium. 

The contaminated off-gas may be treated by means of thermal (adsorption on activated carbon, non-catalytic, and autothermic methods) or biological methods (bio-washers and biofilters) (Heyer et al. 2005a). 

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