IMPROVEMENT FOR LANDFILL AT PULAU BURONG, PULAU PINANG

LAYOUT Before improvement

TRANSFER STATION

LANDFILL

Refuse were dumping and compacted at landfill

Landfill gas being release to atmosphere

Collected leachate is transferred to wastewater treatment

After improvement

TRANSFER STATION

LANDFILL

Refuse were dumping at landfill

Refuse is processed through RDF and gasification process

Collected leachate

The landfill gas is being treated through gasification process to make renewable energy

Transfer to wastewater treatment

Leachate recirculation

TRANSFER STATIONS When the waste disposal unit is remote to the collection area, a transfer station is employed. At a transfer station, waste is transferred from smaller collection vehicles to larger transfer vehicles, such as a tractor and trailer, a barge, railroad car and etc. The decision to build or not to build a transfer station is often an economic or regulatory decision. If the one-way haul distance from the point of the full-collection vehicle to the discharge point is short, then it is likely that no transfer station is needed. On the other hand, if the discharge point is far away and the collection vehicle will have to be away from its primary role of collecting refuse for too long, then a transfer station might be warranted. Longer distance will warrant the construction of a transfer station, while shorter hauls will make it uneconomical. Sometimes, a transfer station is required regardless of distance to a landfill. In Malaysia, the common types of collection vehicle being used are Compactor Lorry, Open Lorry, Roll On-Roll-Off Lorry, Long Haulage Vehicle and Tricycle motorcycle. The Long Haulage Vehicle commonly being used in transferring the refuse from the transfer station to the landfill area. The reason is to minimize the traffic and air pollution impact at a landfill. At certain landfill, a permit may limit the landfill to only receiving waste from transfer station only. This significantly reduces the number of vehicles travelling to a landfill. There are 750 tonnes of rubbish are produced daily and lorries need to make over 180 trips to transport the rubbish to the Ampang Jajar transfer station before finally shipped to Pulau Burung after compression. If the garbage truck is used , this will caused a serious shortage of fleet in servicing garbage collection. That would mean there is no transfer station available for the garbage trucks to be emptied so that the trash can be collected from other routes, compacted, and loaded into larger trailers for transportation to a landfill. Each trip will easily take up about 4 hours, this will drastically cut the number of trucks in servicing garbage collection. As day passed by, the shortage of trucks collecting garbage on behalf of the MPSP (Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai) is expected to worsen, as it will end up struggling to catch up with collections. The total trips will be more than 200. It would turn out to be a very expensive operation. Imagine how it going to be an eyesore with an overpowering rancid stench and garbage scattered all over the streets when the trucks ferrying the garbage polluted the street with leachate.

The primary reason for using a transfer station is to reduce the cost of transporting waste to disposal facilities. Vehicles reduces hauling costs by enabling collection crews to spend less time traveling to and from distant disposal sites and more time collecting waste. This also reduces fuel consumption and collection vehicle maintenance costs, plus produces less overall traffic, air emissions, and road wear. The first day of operation at Pulau Burung landfill trucks have to wait for 12 hour to unload the garbage. Traffic flow in the area was reduced to a crawl for several hours. This seriously affected the schedule for garbage collection.

Leachate Treatment and Disposal The buried organic material decomposes anaerobically, producing various gases (such as methane and carbon dioxide) and liquids that have extremely high pollutional capacity when they enter the ground water. This liquid is called leachate. Leachate tends to contain a large variety of organic and inorganic compounds at relatively low concentration that can be of concern if groundwater and surface water contamination occurs. These compounds are often constituents of gasoline and fuel oils (aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene, xylene and toluene), plant degradation by-products, chlorinated solvents (such as used in dry cleaning) and pesticides. Inorganic compounds of concern are lead and cadmium, which come from batteries, plastics, packaging, electronic appliances, and light bulbs. There are several improvement can be implanted to make the treatment of leachate be more effective. A) Transport the wastewater off-site to commercial wastewater treatment facility. This option allows landfill owner or the operators to focus on their primary solid waste management charge while letting the wastewater experts handle the treatment of contaminated liquids. Off-site treatment of leachate also alleviates some of the permitting, testing, monitoring and reporting requirements for the landfill owner. Thus, this method is likely can reduce the operational cost of the leachate treatment. B) Leachate Recirculation. Another types of effective treatment of leachate is by implanting the leachate recirculation system. Most sanitary landfills are traditionally constructed so the leachate is collected and removed. The rate of stabilization in "dry" landfills may require many years, thereby extending the acid formation and methane fermentation phases of waste stabilization over long periods of time. Under these circumstances, decomposition of biodegradable fractions of solid waste will be impeded and incomplete, often preventing commercial recovery of methane gas and delaying the closure and possible future reuse of the landfill site.

In contrast, leachate recirculation may be used as a management alternative that requires the containment, collection, and recirculation of leachate back through the landfilled waste. This option offers more rapid development of active anaerobic microbial populations and increases reaction rates of these organisms. The time required for stabilization of the readily available organic constituents can be compressed to as little as two to three years rather than the usual, 15 to 20 year period. This accelerated stabilization is enhanced by the routine and uniform exposure of microorganisms to constituents in the leachate, thereby providing the necessary contact time, nutrients, and substrates for efficient conversion and degradation. Hence, leachate recirculation essentially converts the landfill into a dynamic anaerobic bioreactor that accelerates the conversion of organic materials to intermediates and end products. The main goal of leachate control is to prevent uncontrolled dispersion. During leachate recirculation, the leachate is returned to a lined landfill for reinfiltration into the municipal solid waste. Leachate is returned to the landfill using a variety of techniques, including wetting of waste as it is placed, spraying of leachate over the landfill surface, and injection of leachate into vertical columns or horizontal trenches installed within the landfill. This is considered a method of leachate control because as the leachate continues to flow through the landfill it is treated through biological processes, precipitation, and sorption. This process also benefits the landfill by increasing the moisture content which in turn increases the rate of biological degradation in the landfill, the biological stability of the landfill, and the rate of methane recovery from the landfill. It is important to design and operate other landfill components, such as gas management systems, leachate collection, and final and intermediate cover so that they are compatible with bioreactor operation. There are numerous advantages to treating leachate through recirculation and the landfill productivity benefits as leachate is being treated. 1) Landfills that use leachate recirculation experience a decrease in the concentration of the leachate compared to landfills without recycle treatment. This reduces the amount of leachate treatment that is needed and therefore costs are also reduced. 2) The increased moisture content within the solid waste enhances the system conditions for improved biological decomposition of organic matter in the landfill.

3) The organic matter in the leachate, which requires treatment outside the landfill, receives further treatment each time it is recycled through the landfill. This reduces treatment costs of the landfill. 4) The reducing environment within the landfill removes inorganics in the leachate through precipitation and sorption. 5) Leachate recirculation stabilizes the biological system in the landfill and this reduces the environmental threats of the landfill, and reduces the amount of post closure monitoring that is required. It also provides the opportunity for landfill mining and space reclamation. 6) Leachate recirculation increases the rate at which the waste decomposes and this increase the rate of methane production. This makes methane recovery for energy much easier.

Refuse-derived fuel (RDF)

An alternative to allowing refuse to biodegrade and form a useful fuel is the combustion of refuse and energy recovered as heat. The potential for energy recovery from solid waste is significant. Refuse can be burned as in mass burn combustors or being processed to produce a refuse-derived fuel. Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) is produced from combustible components of municipal solid waste (MSW). The waste is being shredded, dried and baled and then burned to produce electricity, thereby making good use of waste that otherwise might have ended up in landfill. RDF consists largely of combustible components of municipal waste such as plastics and biodegradable waste. RDF processing facilities are normally located near a source of MSW. Biodegradable waste is a material that can be broken down by living things into simpler chemicals that can be consumed by living things such as paper, wood, fruits and others. The heat content of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) depends on the concentration of combustible organic materials in the waste and its moisture content. Mixed plastics and rubber contribute the highest heating values to municipal solid waste and food and yard wastes the lowest. Non-combustible materials such as glass and metals are removed during the post-treatment processing cycle with an air knife or other mechanical separation processing. The more the solid waste is processed prior to its combustion, the better is its heat value and usefulness as a substitute for a fossil fuel. The residual material can be sold in its processed form (depending on the process treatment) or it may be compressed into pellets, bricks or logs and used for other purposes either stand-alone or in a recursive recycling process. Thus, by implanting the RDF would make the landfill is more economical and environmental friendly.

Figure 1 shows the separation of combustible and non-combustible material in RDF. RDF is extracted from municipal solid waste using mechanical heat treatment, mechanical biological treatment or waste autoclaves. RDF can be used in a variety of ways to produce electricity. RDF can also be fed into plasma arc gasification modules, pyrolysis plants and where the RDF is capable of being combusted cleanly.

Gasification
Gasification is the main technology for biomass conversion to energy and an attractive alternative for the thermal treatment of solid waste. Gasification becomes an alternative to mass burn or RDF combustion unit. The advantages of this technology are lower air emissions and less ash, but this advantages are offset by higher the costs and lower energy output. The gasification systems were less costly per kWh of electricity generated than the combustion plants, because of their higher efficiency of converting thermal to electrical energy. The number of different uses of gas shows the flexibility of gasification and therefore allows it to be integrated with several industrial processes, as well as power generation systems. Gasification is a biological decomposition of organic matter in waste under controlled conditions to obtain methane and other gases. Gasification converts any carbon-containing material into a synthesis gas (syngas). The syngas is a combustible gas mixture - sometimes known as producer gas - and it typically contains carbon monoxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and methane. The syngas can be used as a fuel to generate electricity or steam. Alternatively, it can be used as a basic chemical building block for a large number of applications in the petrochemical and refining industries. The overall thermal efficiency of gasification process is more than 75%. Gasification can accommodate a wide variety of gaseous, liquid, and solid feedstocks and it has been widely used in commercial applications for more than 50 years in the production of fuels and chemicals. Conventional fuels such as coal and oil, and wastes such as petroleum coke, heavy refinery residuals, secondary oil-bearing refinery materials, municipal sewage sludge, hydrocarbon contaminated soils, and chlorinated hydrocarbon byproducts have all been used successfully in gasification operations. The facility will process residual commercial, industrial and municipal waste, which will be continuously fed into a gasifier that is also supplied with oxygen and nitrogen via an air separation unit. The waste is pre-shredded to avoid blockages. Once in the gasifier the waste is thermally treated by the system's plasma torches to generate a synthetic gas (syngas) which is then put through a gas cleanup stage.

The end product is a clean syngas consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen which is used to fuel a Solar Turbines gas turbine driven generator. Gasification uses a relatively small amount of oxygen or water vapor to convert the organic compounds into a combustible gas. It has two inherent advantages over combustion: The volume of process gas per unit of MSW is much lower than that in combustion. Also, gasification generates a fuel gas that can be integrated with combined cycle turbines or reciprocating engines and thus convert fuel energy to electricity more efficiently than the steam boilers used in combustion of MSW. For long term effect, the facility has the potential to generate renewable hydrogen which could be deployed for commercial use, such as fuelling public transport. In Sri Lanka, 40 MW plasma gasification facilities is planned to treat 1000 tonnes per day of waste, is reported to be under construction with the cost for $248 million. In United Kingdom, the company of Air Products has begun construction of a 50 MW plasma gasification facility in Teesside. Air Products has chosen to build a 50 MW plasma gasification facility in Teesside in the North East of the country. According to Air Products, the facility - currently under construction at the New Energy and Technology Business Park, near Billingham - will be used to generate enough electricity for 50,000 homes. The plant is also expected to divert up to 350,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from landfill per year, which is helping to meet the UK's waste diversion targets. The gasification becomes more popular nowadays in the developed country because of gasification plants produce significantly lower quantities of criteria air pollutants instead it seems costly. In addition, most developed country are agree that gasification is the best ways to reduce the risk of polluted environment compared with combustion of MSW. Gasification reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal because it can use waste products as feedstocks generating valuable products from materials that would otherwise be disposed as wastes. Gasification's byproducts are non-hazardous and are readily marketable. Gasification offers the cleanest, most efficient means of producing electricity from coal and the lowest cost option for capturing CO2 from power generation. The layout below shows how the gasification benefits our society and our environment in order to dispose the municipal solid waste into renewable energy.

Reference

1. http://energy-vision.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/EV-RNG-CommunityGuide.pdf 2. http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert/sofos/NAWTEC-gasificationklein.pdfhttp://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert/sofos/NAWTEC-gasificationklein.pdf 3. (Craig Freudenrich, n.d), How Landfill work. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/landfill6.htm 4. http://www.energysystemsgroup.com/landfills.asp 5. http://www.dartcontainer.com/web/environ.nsf/pages/enfacts.html 6. http://w2es.com/Source/Gasification.pdf 7. http://www.gasification.org/page_1.asp?a=25&b=1&c=85