Municipal solid waste landfill

Municipal solid waste landfill is a site for domestic day-to-day waste disposal. It is also known as a tip, dump, trash disposal site, etc.

Material stored at solid waste landfill is isolated by sealing it with geomembrane liner, which can be HDPE or LDPE or even PVC geomembrane. When geomembrane leaks, the contaminants stored in the landfill spreads with the direction of the groundwater flow. It can reach long distances and contaminate for a very long time. This type of contamination can cause health problems to the people using contaminated water especially where the water is drawn straight from an aquafer (underground river).

SENSOR DDS® LMS allows us to connect to the installed system and measure for leakage, the advantage of this system is that there is less permanent installation on the site itself so whilst long term checking can be carried out still the cost is much lower.

SOLID WASTE LANDFILL IN EASTERN ASIA
SENSOR DDS® FIXED INSTALLATION (SENSOR DDS® LMS)

General project info:

  • Domestic waste landfill
  • Area of 250,000sqft
  • SENSOR DDS® LMS system installed
  • Sensor grid 16x16ft
  • 1,000 DDS sensors and 75 miles of DDS cable used
  • Single geomembrane HDPE 80mil

Landfill design cross section (from bottom to top):

  • Compacted clay 20 inch
  • SENSOR DDS® FIXED
  • HDPE Geomembrane
  • Protective geotextile 35 ounce
  • Drainage layer – gravel 2 foot
  • Solid domestic waste

We applied our Zero Leak Liner® process at this site which means that apart from the permanent leak monitoring system whole landfill construction process was controlled by the use of the full suite of Sensor DDS® technologies, consisting of:

  • SENSOR DDS® MIT – survey straight after geomembrane installation to locate any pinholes made during installation or transport of geomembrane
  • SENSOR DDS® DIPOLE – dipole survey after installation of drainage layer to locate any damage caused by the movement and placing of gravel onto the geomembrane
  • SENSOR DDS® FIXED – buried DDS sensors and DDS cables installation in a gridded pattern at 16x16ft
  • SENSOR DDS® LMS – geomembrane integrity control using installed permanent system locally on site.

Permanent monitoring system SENSOR DDS® was installed on this project in 2013. Below the liner we installed sensors in grid of 5x5m which gives us leak resolution of around 25m². After installation of geomembrane we applied bare liner testing using our Arc Tester – SENSOR DDS® MIT Arctester.

The most damage was identified after installation of protective drainage layer where we located 15 faults of geomembrane using portable testing device for covered geomembrane – SENSOR DDS® Mobile.

We monitor this waste landfill once in 12 months with our portable measuring device SENSOR DDS® LMS.

A few photos from a landfill site

Every sensor is connected to a monitoring centre via its own cable for best quality possible.

When SENSOR DDS® FIXED and geomembranes are installed, we test overall integrity using MIT on the bare geomembrane.

Sensor grid 16'x16' was used at this landfill project with SENSOR DDS® FIXED.

LMS connected to the panel for testing

Typical damage to the geomembrane found by the MIT test (SENSOR DDS® MIT).

The geomembrane is exposed to huge risks for damage during the placement of 12 feet of waste.

After 12 feet layer of waste - we retest geomembrane integrity annually using SENSOR DDS® LMS system.

We test the integrity of the liner in leachate lagoons twice a year.