Numerical model for static chamber measurement of multi-component landfill gas emissions and its application

The quantitative assessment of landfill gas emissions is essential to assess the performance of the landfill cover and gas collection system. The relative error of the measured surface emission of landfill gas may be induced by the static flux chamber technique. This study aims to quantify effects of the size of the chamber, the insertion depth, pressure differential on the relative errors by using an integrated approach of in situ tests, and numerical modeling. A field experiment study of landfill gas emission is conducted by using a static chamber at one landfill site in Xi’an, Northwest China. Additionally, a two-dimensional axisymmetric numerical model for multi-component gas transport in the soil and the static chamber is developed based on the dusty-gas model (DGM). The proposed model is validated by the field data obtained in this study and a set of experimental data in the literature. The results show that DGM model has a better capacity to predict gas transport under a wider range of permeability compared to Blanc’s method. This is due to the fact that DGM model can explain the interaction among gases (e.g., CH(4), CO(2), O(2), and N(2)) and the Knudsen diffusion process while these mechanisms are not included in Blanc’s model. Increasing the size and the insertion depth of static chambers can reduce the relative error for the flux of CH(4) and CO(2). For example, increasing the height of chambers from 0.55 to 1.1 m can decrease relative errors of CH(4) and CO(2) flux by 17% and 18%, respectively. Moreover, we find that gas emission fluxes for the case with positive pressure differential (∆P(in-out)) are greater than that of the case without considering pressure fluctuations. The Monte Carlo method was adopted to carry out the statistical analysis for quantifying the range of relative errors. The agreement of the measured field data and predicted results demonstrated that the proposed model has the capacity to quantify the emission of landfill gas from the landfill cover systems.