A model for gas pressure in layered landfills with horizontal gas collection systems

Abstract The recovery and emission of landfill gas (LFG) is an important topic in landfill management. To produce an effective engineering design for an LFG collection system, designers must understand the migration of gas from the waste body to horizontal extraction wells. This paper develops a two-dimensional analytical solution to enable the study of the gas pressure distribution, well pressure and recovery efficiency in layered landfills with horizontal wells. A horizontal layered structure is used to accommodate the non-homogeneity of various municipal solid waste (MSW) aspects with respect to depth, including gas generation, permeability and temperature. The governing equations, subject to boundary and continuity conditions, are solved by using separation of variables and double finite integral transforms. The solution was verified against another analytical solution and a numerical simulation. Subsequently, a sensitivity analysis of single-well model parameters is performed to optimize a double-well system. The results show that a landfill with horizontal collection systems cannot be assumed to be one dimensional with increasing well spacing. Additionally, both the operational vacuum and maximum gas pressure can be reduced through the design of a double- or multiple-well system. Therefore, the proposed solution can be used for the verification of more complex models and the preliminary design of a horizontal well system.