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Emissions of organic compounds from landfills depend on the fate of the compounds inside the landfills. This field study was used to investigate the fate in landfills of organic compounds having different physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. For this purpose, a pilot-scale landfill was constructed containing 540 m3 of ordinary household waste, 12 organic compounds were added at the top of the landfill, and leachate and landfill gas samples were continually collected and analyzed. The fate of each compound was theoretically estimated from literature data on the processes which significantly affect the compounds: sorption, dissociation, evaporation, and transformation. These processes could be described by the octanol/water coefficients, Kow, the acid dissociation constants, pKa, the Henry's law constants, H, and the potential of the compounds to be biologically transformed. The use of a ranking score system was suggested as a tool for interpreting the predicted fate of specific compounds caused by several simultaneous processes. A good correlation could be found between the measured emissions and the theoretically evaluated fate. It was concluded that the construction of a pilot-scale landfill is a useful method for studying simultaneous processes in landfills and that the emissions of organic compounds from landfills can be qualitatively predicted from literature data.

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