Biodegradability of Municipal Solid Waste Components in Laboratory-Scale Landfills

Abstract

The objective of this research was to characterize the anaerobic biodegradability of municipal refuse components by measuring methane yields, the extent of cellulose and hemicellulose decomposition, and leachate toxicity. Tests were conducted in quadruplicate in 2-L reactors operated to obtain maximum yields. Measured methane yields for grass, leaves, branches, food waste, coated paper, old newsprint, old corrugated containers, and office paper were 144.4, 30.6, 62.6, 300.7, 84.4, 74.3, 152.3, and 217.3 mL of CH4/dry g, respectively. Although, as a general trend, the methane yield increased as the cellulose plus hemicellulose content increased, confounding factors precluded establishing a quantitative relationship. Similarly, the degree of lignification of a particular component was not a good predictor of the extent of biodegradation. With the exception of food waste, leachate from the decomposition of refuse components was not toxic as measured by using an anaerobic toxicity assay.

Potential water quality impacts originating from land burial of cattle carcasses

“…Increasing pH was observed until 120 days of decomposition when the pH remained neutral (pH ~6.8). The observed leachate pH changes in this study investigating anaerobic decomposition of cattle carcasses are consistent with those previously reported in laboratory scale studies of municipal refuse degradation and a previous laboratory scale study of cattle carcass decomposition conducted by the authors [15][16][17]. The dissolved oxygen concentration of the leachate decreased from 7.5 mg/L initially to less than 1 mg/L within the first two weeks of decomposition (Figure 1, panel B).…”

Is It Better To Burn or Bury Waste for Clean Electricity Generation?

“…The methane potential of biogenic waste components such as paper, food, and yard waste is measured under optimum anaerobic decay conditions in a laboratory study (24), whose other observations reveal that some portion of the carbon in the waste does not biodegrade and thus this quantity gets sequestered in landfills (28). However, there is still a debate on how to account for any biogenic "sequestered" carbon.…”

Succession and phylogenetic profile of methanogenic archaeal communities during the composting process of rice straw estimated by PCR-DGGE analysis

“…1988(Derikx et aI. , 1989Lopez-Real and Baptista 1996;Eleazer et al 1997;Hellmann et al 1997;Miura 2000;Sommer and Moller 2000;Zeman et al 2002). Furthermore, Hellmann et al (1997) reported that the amount of ether lipids increased with elevated methane emission in the composting process of a mixture of municipal and yard waste, indicating the enhanced growth of methanogenic archaea.…”