SUITABILITY OF DIFFERENT CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR

ASSESSING THE HYDROLOGY OF A FULL SCALE PILOT

LANDFILL

Shirishkumar M. Baviskar , Timo J. Heimovaara

Geo engineering section, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geo sciences, Delft
University of Technology, Stevinweg 1, 2618 CN Delft.
s.m.baviskar@tudelft.nl

SUMMARY: Leachate emission to the groundwater is considered to be one of the largest long-
term impacts related to landfilling. Recently we started a program, partly subsidized by the Dutch
Technology foundation STW, aimed towards developing a frame work which allows for a
quantitative assessment of the long-term emission potential of a landfill. The research program is
closely connected to a number of pilot-projects which will be carried out by the Dutch landfill
operators Afvalzorg and Attero. These pilots aim to reduce the long-term emission potential by a
combination of leachate recirculation and landfill aeration. This research program will test
innovative monitoring techniques, carry out additional monitoring, and develop a modeling
frame work in order to get as much information as possible from the pilot projects. Within this
program a PhD-project started in September 2010 which is focused on quantification of the
hydrological processes involved in controlling the long-term emission potential. A large number
of different approaches have been used in the past to describe landfill hydrology. These concepts
range from fully mechanistic approaches based on the Richards equation and water retention
curves to fully empirical exponential release curves. Currently we are evaluating how the
different approaches used in the past can be used within the context of the pilot projects and our
research program. We will present a range of different concepts and compare the performance of
these concepts with respect to aspects which we deem important such as preferential flow,
leachate production with time, peak delay time as a result of precipitation events etc.
Parametrization and impact of heterogeneity will also be taken in to account as well.

1. INTRODUCTION
Landfilling will always be an necessary final storage solution for handling certain wastes
streams from our society. Modern landfills are advanced technological installations separating the
waste from the environment, while providing means for capturing and handling adverse
emissions such as landfill gas and leachate. After the landfill is completely filled, a landfill cover
is installed limiting the amount of water infiltrating in to the landfill, thus preventing leachate
production and emission to the environment. This approach, however, requires an eternal
aftercare of the landfill cover, as the landfill may contain a significant amount of waste with
contamination that potentially could migrate to the environment.
Research on landfills carried out in the last couple of decades has shown that waste in a
landfill is subject to a range of natural processes which tend to reduce the emission potential (for
example[Kjeldsen et al. 2002]. This research has led to the development of approaches based on
recirculation of leachate [Pohland & Alyousfi 1994; Reinhart 1995; El-Fadel 1999; Pohland &
Kim 1999; Hudgins et al. 2002; Erses & Onay 2003; Sanphoti et al. 2006; Benson et al. 2007;
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Santander, Spain; 27 - 28 April 2011 1
Jiang et al. 2008; Zhu et al. 2009; Calabro et al. 2010; Schiappacasse et al. 2010] or
aeration[Warith & Takata 2004; Ritzkowski et al. 2006; Charles et al. 2009] which aim to reduce
the emission potential within a relatively short period of time. Both recirculation of leachate and
areation of the landfill body stimulate the naturally occuring processes in the landfill body,
leading to an enhanced degradation of organic matter and an increased fixation of inorganic
contaminants. The idea is that a landfill in this fashion will require much less aftercare.
In order for regulators and landfill operators to agree on the required level of after care, a
quantitative estimation of remaining long-term emission potential is required. Currently, no
methods exist that allow us to uniquely quantify this, although, many projects have been carried
out claiming effectiveness of landfill stabilization technology. Currently a number of landfill
stabilization demonstration projects are in preparation in The Netherlands which has led to a
research program aimed towards quantifying the long-term emission potential (see presentation
by T.J. Heimovaara).
One the projects within this program will focus on quantification of landfill hydrology. This
paper gives an insight in to our main approach to developing conceptual models for describing
the essential aspects of landfill hydrology. The main guiding principle to our approach is for what
goal we want to use the hydrological information obtained. First we will give an overview of the
three main domains which are important for landfill stabilization, then we will identify different
concepts which could provide us with the required hydrological information. And finally we will
draw conclusions on how we will approach these issues in our project.

2. APPROACHES FOR CONCEPTUALIZING LANDFILL HYDROLOGY

2.1 BLACK BOX
Waste in the landfills is exposed to physical effects influencing the production and flow of
leachate, gas and heat. These processes will change the characteristics of the original waste,
leading to macroscopic effects, for example severe settlement of the landfill as a whole. Dynamic
processes taking place in landfills can be represented as a black box in which inputs in to the
landfill are coupled to outputs (emissions). The input-output relationship (figure 1) will
encapsulate all biochemical processes occurring in the waste. Inputs are water infiltrating at the
landfill surface from sources such as precipitation (rain or snow) and irrigation (either fresh water
or recirculated leachate). Outputs are leachate from the drain above the bottom liner, and landfill
gas captured in the gas collection system or directly emitted to the atmosphere. Although leachate
will be recirculated, we explicitly consider it to be both an output as well as an input.

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Santander, Spain; 27 - 28 April 2011 2
 Figure 1 Schematic overview
of input-output coupling in
landfills
Jury & Roth [1990] present a generic approach to describe the processes given in figure 1,
considering the output flux as a function of the input flux travelling through a vessel, where the
solute enters the vessel at time t-t' has a probability f(t')dt' that it will leave the vessel at time t. If
Cs(t) is considered as a inlet concentration then outflow concentration at time t is given by:

t t (1)
C o t =∫0 C s t−t '  f t '  dt '=∫0 C s t '  f t−t '  dt

where the output concentration at time t is made up of contributions from solute molecules that
entered the inflow end at various earlier times t-t', multiplied by the probability f(t')dt' of having a
travel time t'. This probability includes the characteristics of the “black box” system behaviour.
Equation 1 is called as the transfer function model of the output concentration.
Break-through curves from tracer tests conducted within a landfill define the flow mapping of
the constituents and hence characterize hydrological aspects. The main assumption behind
equation 1 is that the processes in the system (in our case the landfill body) are linear and causal.
If we exactly know the characteristics of the input function Cs and output function Co, we can
invert the transfer function to quantitatively determine the system function f. This provides us
with the opportunity to parametrize a wide range of flow and transport models such as Darcy’s
and Richard's equation, dual porosity models, kinetic wave models etc.[Gerke & Genuchten 1993;
Bendz 1998; Rosqvist & Destouni 2000; Hantush & Zhang 2002]
The well known Convection Dispersion Equation (CDE) can easily be cast in to a transfer
function formulation by solving for a Dirac delta boundary condition [Jury & Roth 1990]:

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Santander, Spain; 27 - 28 April 2011 3
 t z  z−Vt ' 2
C f  z , t=∫0 C i n t−t '  exp −  dt ' (2)
2   Dt ' 3 4Dt '

Where D is effective diffusion-dispersion coefficient, V is pore water velocity or mobile velocity,

and z be the depth of concentration and the initial and boundary conditions would be as follows
f f f
C  z , t=0, C  0,t =C i n t  ,C ∞ ,t =0 (3)

With this approach we can, so to say, open up the black box and obtain a process based
description. However, the processes occurring at the smaller scales are described in a very
integrated fashion.
2.2 STARTING FROM SMALL SCALE PROCESS DESCRIPTION
If we start at the small scale, we would build up our model from by upscaling from a process
description at small scale. However, the scale at which we describe the occurring processes is one
the main challenges modelling. This is especially the case for modelling the processes in a
landfill body, biological degradation takes place at the scale of a micro-organism and we can
expect a huge heterogeneity at this scale. For instance, at the edge of a toothpick we will have
hydrolysis and methanogenic conditions, whereas the inside of the toothpick is pure non-
degraded wood. This scale is far too small for quantitative modelling of a whole landfill. An
approach to overcome this issue is the REV concept. The smallest volume measuring the yield
(or mass balance of a process) of volume that can be considered homogeneous is defined the
representative elementary volume (REV). The consequence of this assumption is that as the scale
increases, parameters in the process description will describe more and more integrated or even
lumped properties. Figure 2 gives an example of the REV concept for defining porosity, clearly at
very small scales, porosity is an undefined concept as it can either be 1 or 0 depending on the
position of the REV.

Figure 2 Illustration of the REV

concept for porosity (image copied from
[Paunescu, D. ] )

Landfill models often describe water flow using the so-called Richard's equation which is an
extension of Darcy's equation to unsaturated conditions[Koifiatis et al. 1984; McCreanor &
Reinhart 1999; Mccreanor & Reinhart 2000; McDougall 2007]. Describing water flow in soils
with Richard's equation works provides very good results because a soil generally consists of
grains which are quite much smaller than the chosen REV. A field of a hectare with an
5 7
unsaturated zone of 10 meter would be modelled with 10 to 10 cells or elements, so the REV
3
ranges from 0.01 to 1 m . Clearly soils can be considered homogeneous at all these scales.
Particles of waste in a landfill have a size distribution that range from smaller that 0.01 to larger
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 3
than 1 m , making the the choice of the scale of an REV very difficult. We feel that the REV
3
should be at the scale of 1 m or larger, therefore , we will need to develop an approach where
processes occurring at smaller scales are lumped together. An example of such an approach is the
Mobile Immobile Concept for describing solute transport. A major challenge will be to integrate
these processes with for example biodegradation and still contain information on heterogeneity
within the REV.
Another example can be seen when we consider Darcy's equation. An assumption of Darcy's
law is that inertial forces are negligible and that viscous forces must be predominant [Guymon
1994]. As the Darcy's law can be derived from the Navier-Stokes equation for an incompressible
Newtonian fluid in the laminar range. The most significant assumption is that the inertial and the
local acceleration terms can be essentially set to zero. Therefore, Darcy's law is the conservation
of momentum and is valid up to Reynold's numbers of 1 to 10 where flow is laminar, whereas
between 10 to 100 flow is transitional and above 100, flow is turbulent. Reynold's number Re is
given by equation 4. Where ν is average velocity of fluid, ρf is fluid density, k is permeability and
μ is dynamic viscosity.

Re =v ρ f k (4)
μ
In situation where leachate is being infiltrated using infiltration methods such as fields, drains
and wells, flow in large pores could very well be turbulent. Preferential flow will occur because
water flow is diverted and as such a complex flow pattern develops. Figure 3 gives a conceptual
overview of such a flow pattern and Richard's equation will not be able to describe this flow
pattern very easily. Using the kinematic wave equation would be a viable alternative instead as
this lumps essential phenomena in a relatively easy to use equation[Germann 1985; Bendz et al.
1998; Levy & Germann 1988].

Figure Schematic overview

of conceptual model of landfill

Figure 3 Schematic overview of conceptual model of landfill hydrology

2.3 USING FLOW FOR ESTIMATING BIODEGRADATION

Micro-organisms responsible for stabilization of the landfill body live in the water phase. They
live in biofilms consisting of organisms and Extra cellular Polymeric Substances (EPS). Within
these biofilms, all sorts of reactive substances such as enzymes are present which can for instance
enhance hydrolysis of Solid Organic Matter (SOM). The biofilms require nutrients and they need
to get rid of waste (mainly bi-carbonate) both of which need to be transported via the water
phase. For biofilms that survive far from the preferential flow paths, this transport will be
dominated by diffusion.

Models that are able to capture the main kinetics of biomass growth in such a system are based
on the dual (or multi-) porosity concept. Water is present in a mobile and immobile phase.
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Solutes dissolved in the mobile water phase move by convection and dispersion, solutes present
in the immobile phase move by diffusion only. The mobile and immobile phases are coupled
using a rate dependent coupling term:

∂C m ∂2 C m ∂C m
m =m Dm 2
−Jw −S mim
∂t ∂z ∂z
∂C im (5)
im =S mim
∂t
S mim=k mim C m −C im

Where θm and θim is water content in mobile and immobile phase respectively, Cm and Cim is
concentration of the solute in mobile and immobile phase respectively, Jw is steady water flux rate
(Vm θm = Jw, where Vm is mobile solute velocity) and Kmim is the exchange rate parameter between
mobile and immobile phases.
One should realize that the model given by equation 5 is an approximation. All immobile
water is considered to behave in the same fashion, it is not possible to distinguish between water
that sits in the middle of a large aggregate and water that sits at the edge of the immobile zone.
This might be very important after aeration where it is expected that a redox gradient will
develop from the aerated mobile zone (the macropores) to the innerparts of the immobile zone.
Of course it is possible to enhance the model to include such properties, but the challenge then is
to quantify the parameters in a meaningfull way.
Biodegradation will change the concentrations of a multitude of dissolved species, therefore a
transport model should include multiple components which are interdependent. Most
biodegradation models are time dependent and it is generally accepted that hydrolysis is the rate
determining step [McDougall 2007]. However, diffusion from and to the mobile phase will be an
imporant rate determining step. Meaningfull estimation of the required rates is difficult and will
require much attention, especially if we want to integrate the impact of possible redox gradients
on the degradation.
2.4 GAS FLOW AND LANDFILL AERATION
A final issue which needs to be taken in to account is the preferential flow of landfill gas and
air throughout the landfill body. The landfill is an unsaturated system with a wide diversity of
pore-sizes leading to a strong preferential water flow as well as gas flow. Quantitative
understanding of the gas flow will become essential in understanding how landfill aeration
stabilizes the waste body. What will happen when aeration stops, will the landfill again reach
fully reduced conditions or will the redox gradient reach a steady state because of ventilation via
the preferential flow paths? If ventilation plays a role, what technical measures should be put in
to place to guarantee long term stability?

3 CONCLUSION
In this paper we have termed landfill as a blackbox within which dynamic processes takes
place relating input-output parameters. The REV could be considered as large volume unlike of
that considered for soil and clay flow models, as because landfills are very heterogeneous and
unsaturated and is by default classified as mobile and immobile region following the preferential
flow paths. The biodegradation of the organics could be represented as model with
interdependent parameters considering mobile and immobile phase. Lastly how the flow model
could have an effect when gas flow and aeration of the landfills are considered. During the
research project PhD we are going to model the flow comprising the leachate, gas and aeration
along with considering their complex interrelation.
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