Coupled Analysis of Leachate Recirculation and Heat Transfer for a Landfill with Buried Waste Tyres

In bio-reactor landfills, both moisture and temperature have a significant impact on the bio-degradation processes. In order to speed up the leachate recirculation, a new drainage system is proposed to build a space network of bonded whole waste tyres in landfills.

In this study, a coupled dual-permeability flow and the heat transfer model was constructed to study the interaction between leachate migration and temperature evolution.

The established model was applied to a simplified bio-reactor landfill and the simulation results demonstrated that the presence of waste tyres could significantly speed up the heat transfer. And the intermittent injection and the varying injection pressure might affect the distribution of temperature as well. Additionally, cooling the leachate injected could be another measure in avoiding the occurrence of hot spots in landfills.