Prof. D. N. Singh

ARIF MOHAMMAD

M.Tech+Ph.D1
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, India arif.juce93@gmail.com1

DECOMPOSITION CHARACTERISTICS OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE IN A BIOREACTOR LANDFILL

A bioreactor landfill, BLF, primarily employs leachate recirculation to decompose municipal solid waste, MSW, rapidly and scientifically. In this context, for an efficient functioning of BLF and to initiate its landfill mining, it becomes crucial to establish the state of MSW, which essentially depends on the operating conditions and the organic matter, OM, content. Incidentally, OM mainly comprises elements (viz., carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen), and their determination with respect to time, though a difficult task, would reveal the state of decomposition of MSW. Keeping this in view, an easy to adopt methodology, designated as NovADEC (Novel Approach to Determine Elemental Content), which facilitates quick estimation of elements of the OM, based on the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and partial least-squares regression, has been developed. Furthermore, as the OM content of MSW varies with time, a methodology DecoMSW (decomposition of MSW), which facilitates assessment of the temporal and spatial variations of these elements, has been proposed. Based on the temporal variation of the volatile solids, which contribute to the OM present in MSW, a generalized relationship has been proposed, and its applicability in making a decision to initiate landfill mining has been demonstrated successfully. However, as DecoMSW is based on experiments that are cumbersome to perform, expensive and time-consuming, a Numerical Modeling of MSW Decomposition, designated as NuMoDec, by incorporating the coupled thermo-hydro-bio-chemico-mechanical phenomena that occur in BLF has also been proposed. The NuMoDec, which is primarily COMSOL Multiphysics® 5.5a based, has been found to be quite useful and handy for establishing decomposition characteristics of MSW in BLF..