Effective monitoring of landfills: flux measurements and thermography enhance efficiency and reduce environmental impact

This work presents a methodology for estimating the behaviour of a landfill system in terms of biogas release to the atmosphere. Despite the various positions towards the impact of methane on global warming, there is a general agreement about the fact that methane from landfill represents about 23% of the total anthropogenic CH4 released to the atmosphere. Despite the importance of this topic, no internationally accepted protocol exists to quantify the leakage of biogas from the landfill cover. To achieve this goal, this paper presents a field method based on accumulation chamber flux measurements. In addition, the results obtained from a nine-year-long monitoring activity on an Italian municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill are presented. The connection between such flux measurements of biogas release and thermal anomalies detected by infrared radiometry is also discussed. The main overall benefit of the presented approach is a significant increase in the recovered energy from the landfill site by means of an optimal collection of biogas, which implies a reduction of the total anthropogenic methane originated from the disposal of waste.