Degradation of unsorted municipal solid waste by a leach-bed process

In current landfills breakdown of municipal solid waste (MSW) occurs slowly and the landfill leaves a legacy of care, management, monitoring and poten tial catastrophic failure over several generations. Social concern over the se long term issues, with their legislative and economic implementation, in creasingly favour practices which promote short stabilisation times and min imise environmental impact. This paper describes experiments carried out on mixed and unsorted municipal solid waste (MSW) in which 75% of the rapidly biodegradable fraction was degraded in about 2 months with an average yiel d of 0.18 m(3) CH4/kg volatile solids at s.t.p. The experiments served to d emonstrate that with proper leachate management very rapid decomposition of waste can be accomplished by taking the waste through a series of controll ed degradation stages. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.