Spatial variability of leachate tables, leachate composition and hydraulic conductivity in a landfill stabilized by in situ aeration

Abstract

Within the framework of the Dutch sustainable landfill project iDS, four compartments of the Dutch landfill Braambergen have been treated by in-situ aeration since 2017. The aeration infrastructure comprises 230 wells with a spacing of 15 to 20 m, distributed over an area of around 10 ha, intercepting a waste body of 1.2 × 106 t of contaminated soils, soil treatment residues, bottom ashes and construction and demolition waste. The wells, used in an alternating fashion for air injection and gas extraction, can also be used to monitor water tables within the waste body. In order to describe the spatial variability of waste hydraulics, design a larger scale leachate pumping test and, eventually, support model predictions of the site’s water balance and emission potential, analyses of leachate composition and pumping tests on individual wells have been conducted. The spatial variability of leachate quality and water tables is very high with no geospatial relationship between the sampling points. Each sampling point is representative of itself only. Large differences prevail not only between and across the compartments, but also between directly neighbouring wells. Both the small scale differences in leachate tables as well as in leachate quality indicate a spatial pattern of zones with low horizontal connectivity within the waste body. Recovery rates of drawdown in the wells yielded preliminary estimates of horizontal waste hydraulic conductivity in the order of 1×10-7 to 6×10-4 m/s.