Bacterial methane oxidation in landfill cover layers ‐ a coupled FE multiphase description

Abstract

Landfill gas is composed of methane (CH 4 ) and (CO 2 ) at a ratio of about (60% – 40%), whereby the impact of methane on the greenhouse effect is about 25 times higher than that of carbon dioxide. Bacterial methane oxidation, taking place in the landfill cover layer, helps to reduce the climate active emissions from landfill sites. This contribution presents a theoretical and numerical approach to model the coupled processes of bacterial methane oxidation. An isothermal biphasic model based on the Theory of Porous Media (TPM) and Mixture Theory is introduced as well as the coupled finite element (FE) calculation concept. (© 2013 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)