Landfill air and odour emissions from an integrated waste management facility

Abstract

A mixture of gases and obnoxious odours are major components of landfill emission. A dispersion modelling on air pollutants and odour emissions anticipated from a proposed Integrated Waste Management Facility was conducted considering five operating scenarios. Impacts of the predicted ground level concentrations of air pollutants (including carbon monoxide, CO; oxides of nitrogen, NOX; sulphur dioxide, SO2; particulate matter, PM and hydrocarbons, HC) and odour on ambient air quality were investigated using the 10-min 1 OU/m3 odour limit, CH4 Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and the daily limits of CO, NOx, SO2, PM and HC. The anticipated maximum ground level concentration of emitted odour and CH4 are 0.0040 OU/m3 and 0.0349 ppm, respectively. Simultaneous operations of all the major components of the facility will generate the daily maximum concentrations of 7.34, 2.60, 7.31, 29.72 and 0.42 μg/m3, for CO, NOX, SO2, PM and HC, respectively. Generally, the facility impacts on ambient air quality will be within the acceptable limit.