Bioreactor Landfill Technology

From a future perspective, the ways of Municipal solid waste management in India has to be improved for a better quality of life. Open dumping or landfilling is adopted as the ultimate means of disposal in India. It is considered as a cost effective method, if sufficient land is available. Over the years, apart from some improvements such as recycling and source reduction techniques, it can be found that landfill disposal of waste will remain as an unavoidable element of the solid waste management system. The concept of a Bioreactor landfill technology for Indian Municipal solid waste management is studied in this paper. Bioreactor landfill concept changes the purpose of landfilling from storage to treatment of waste. The working principle is that the bioreactor landfills promotes and accelerates the biological degradation of the organic fraction of the incoming waste by maintaining optimum moisture content inside the cells where the wastes are stored. Moisture can be controlled by the recirculation of leachate and the organic waste gets stabilized by the microbes. Significant environmental and economical benefits can be derived by the installation of Bioreactor landfills, and can be considered as a promising technique of solid waste management system for a highly populated and developing country like India.