Identification of Fire Hazards Due to Landfill Gas Generation and Emission

Abstract

The last and the only national-level data on waste composition and amount in Serbia dates back to 2010, when the Serbian Government adopted a waste management strategy from 2010 to 2019. With representative samples from 160 municipalities, it was estimated that 0.87 kg/ capita/day of waste was generated in Serbia, which amounted to 318 t/day [1]. By comparison, waste generation in Turkey (Kocaeli) is 0.92 kg/capita/day, in Austria (Vienna) 1.50 kg/capita/day, and in the USA (New York) it is 2.58 kg/capita/day [2]. The number of landfi ll fi res in Nišava County, which comprises 71 settlements and more than 260,000 residents, is highly signifi cant, as indicated by the statistical data of the Sector for Emergency Management, Niš offi ce, for the period between 2009 and 2016, according to which 7.56% of all open-space fi res [3] and 5.60% of all fi res in total were landfi ll fi res. Over the last seven years, out of 7,535 openspace fi res, 570 occurred in sanitary, non-sanitary, and illegal landfi lls. The numbers of landfi ll fi res in Nišava County by year are given in Table 1. According to these numbers, it is evident that the number of fi res has been declining in recent years as a result of improved landfi ll fi re prevention, implementation, and adherence to laws, analyses of previous fi res, learning from previous experience, better citizen cooperation, etc. As opposed to surface fi res, which are instantly noticeable, underground landfi ll fi res occur under the Pol. J. Environ. Stud. Vol. 27, No. 1 (2018) AbstractSince the identifi cation of fi re hazards in landfi lls has not been suffi ciently investigated and studied, the goal of this research is to present a methodological approach to the issue. This paper defi nes fi re occurrence indicators, which are considered as one of the risk factors of underground and/or surface fi res in non-sanitary landfi lls. In this study, fi re hazards are identifi ed in terms of present landfi ll gas concentrations and gas well temperatures monitored by a thermal imaging camera at the nonsanitary landfi ll "Bubanj" in Niš, Serbia, which has been in service for 49 years. Landfi ll gas concentrations at the landfi ll were measured from May to October 2015. The paper also presents ambient air temperatures, which infl uence landfi ll gas and gas well temperatures, a necessary factor of landfi ll fi res.Signifi cant fi re predictors for the landfi ll body have been determined based on all the temperatures and concentrations of landfi ll gas components measured using the statistical method of logistic regression.

Resident Perceptions on the Health Risks Associated with Solid Waste Disposal at Kalundu Dumpsite, Kitui County – Kenya on the Surrounding Human Settlement

“…Just like in other studies [32][33][34]15], the perceived health risks reported by the respondents in this study included; smoke emanating from burning waste, odour from rotting organic waste, providing an habitat for breeding mosquitoes, and harboring other disease vectors (Fig. 3).…”

Investigating Effects of Landfill Soil Gases on Landfill Elevated Subsurface Temperature

“…To summarize Figure 4, when the gas conditions are unsafe, the temperature should be higher. Milosevic et al [56] observed O 2 concentrations of 15 to 21.2% v/v (more than double the reference O 2 volume of 5%) in gas-wells, whereas the gas-well temperature ranged from 24.9 to 48.9 • C and the fire probability ratio decreased by 0.836 with an increase in the CH 4 -to-CO 2 ratio concentrations. Another study [16] also found similarly high O 2 levels (15-21.2% v/v) corresponding with gas-wells in both cool temperature and SET areas.…”

“…Among the four parameters, the CH 4 -to-CO 2 ratio is the covariate showing the strongest association with the temperature ranges with a significance level less than 0.001. Using a univariate logistical regression to study the synergistic effect of fire indicators, Milosevic et al [56] found the CH 4 -to-CO 2 ratio concentration to be a statistically significant fire indicator. The first tree branch starting with a ratio of <1, shows a strong association with O 2 (significance level, p < 0.001), whereas CH 4 was strongly associated (significance level, p < 0.001) with the branch of a ratio of >1.…”

Occurrence and ecotoxicological effects of fires at municipal solid waste landfills

“…The thermal radiation from a fire in a landfill site can be intense and make it very difficult for firefighters to approach its source to apply extinguishing media. Owing to these reasons their characteristics and mitigation measures have been receiving attention from the recent research fraternity (Chavan et al, 2019;Manjunatha et al, 2020;Mikalsen et al, 2021;Milosevic et al, 2018;Mazzucco et al, 2020;Morales S et al, 2018).…”