Index to Evaluate Closed Landfills Based on Leachate Parameters

Abstract

<jats:p xml:lang="en">After the end of their useful life, waste landfills and their surroundings should continue to be monitored constantly. The main concern is pollution of groundwater and surface water from leachate, posing a risk to public health. The effluent generated by closed landfills may have equal or greater potential for contamination compared to active landfills. The proposal of an index to evaluate the landfill conditions after closure was the main motivation for this work. The insufficiency of data on the waste entering these areas causes uncertainty as to how long the material will continue to degrade. In this article, the presence of polluting elements in the leachate of a deactivated landfill was evaluated through the characterization of the effluent during a ten-year monitoring period. From the study of existing indexes to evaluate the leachate of closed waste disposal areas, we verified the importance given to certain parameters that are not relevant for Brazilian landfills, in which the presence of organic matter is high. The present work contributes by generating information for a better understanding of the impacts caused by landfills in Brazil and in most countries of the Third Word, in which organic waste represents at least 50% of the waste discarded in landfills. With the application of the proposed Deactivated Landfill Assessment Index (DLAI), involving four-parameter analysis (pH, BOD, COD and ammoniacal nitrogen), possible threats of pollution can be detected, allowing prioritizing areas for remediation and better allocation of resources. </jats:p>

Revised Leachate Pollution Index (r-LPI): A Tool to Quantify Pollution Potential of Landfill Leachate

“…The LPI has been extensively used around the world to accomplish several goals, including comparing or ranking municipal landfill sites (Aziz et al 2010;Hussein et al 2019;Joseph et al 2020;Mishra et al 2018;Rani et al 2020), estimating the pollution potential of landfill sites (Agbozu et al 2015;Arunbabu et al 2017;Kale et al 2010;Lothe and Sinha 2017;Naveen et al 2017;Sewwandi et al 2013), assessing temporal and seasonal variation of leachate quality (Chaudhary et al 2020;Esakku et al 2007), and assessing landfill leachate treatment system (Bhalla et al 2014;Hossain et al 2016). However, in recent times, the LPI has been criticized for its complexities, inadequacy in certain scenarios, and reliability (Mahler et al 2020;Rajoo et al 2020;Bisht et al 2021).…”