Afroza Ayub

Graduation Semester and Year

2019

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Civil Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Sahadat Hossain

Abstract

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management is the major environmental and economical concern for the world. Among all the MSW management alternatives, sustainable Bioreactor has potential to solve environmental and economic concerns related to organic waste. This potential of Sustainable Bioreactor can be enhanced by accelerated decomposition of waste. Accelerated decomposition of organic fraction of MSW can be achieved by the addition of nitrogen rich, macro and micro nutrients such as sludge and manures. Several studies have been conducted by using sludge as inoculum for degrading organic fraction of MSW in the anaerobic digester. However, this study is to compare the performance of different combination of sludge on the degradation of MSW conducted on laboratory simulated Bioreactors. Also, the effects of wastewater recirculation on degradation of MSW have been studied. Therefore, this study was conducted with the objective of finding the effects of addition of sludge and wastewater recirculation in the degradation of MSW within laboratory simulated Bioreactors and comparing them. In this study, four sets of reactors were prepared with selected MSW and inoculum composition. The reactors were operated in the environmental growth chamber at 37ºC and were monitored regularly. The pH, BOD and COD, TS and TDS tests were conducted on generated leachate along with gas composition and gas volume measurement. Based on the experimental results, reactor with 10% sludge as inoculum presented better result compared to reactors with 20% sludge and 10% sludge with wastewater recirculation. The highest amount of gas was generated on one reactor from the pair of SW with 10% sludge. The cumulative volume of gas generated by the reactor was 65.14 L/lb. The peak value of methane yield observed from one of the SW pair of the reactor was 603 mL/lb./day after 40 days. The change in volatile organic content for the reactor from SW pair with 10% sludge was more than other reactors after 150 days of operation. Final volatile solid percentage for this reactor was 64.71%. This means that this reactor experienced highest degradation than any other reactors. Therefore, based on the experimental study, it was determined that sludge have the potential to be utilized as inoculum for improving the degradation of waste.

Keywords

Landfill, Bioreactors

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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