International Journal of Waste Resources

Abstract

Estimation of Methane Emission from a Waste Dome in a Tropical Insular Area

Thomas Plocoste, Sandra Jacoby-Koaly, Rose-Helen Petit and André Roussas

In the Caribbean, most of the waste is stored in open landfills without biogas collection systems. Methane emission from landfills is a major contributor to Greenhouse effect. Several models projecting methane emissions from landfills have been proposed in literature. The Landfill Gas Emissions Model (LandGEM) is one the conventional models allowing to take into account, though roughly, the climate environment. By comparing model results with field measurements in previous works, the LandGEM gave good results. Most of the studies using the LandGEM were principally conducted in the United States or in Europe. Few studies have made use of LandGEM in tropical areas. Caribbean islands are characterized by significant rainfall and high humidity throughout the year. In this study, we apply the LandGEM to La Gabarre, the main open landfill of Guadeloupe archipelago in the Lesser Antilles. By comparing model results to field measurements, we observe that the model biogas production is greater than recovered biogas collected to be flared by a factor of 1.94. However, accounting for numerous error factors such as a recovery efficiency of the collection system which is necessarily lower than 100%, waste coverage type or the fact that LandGEM model assumes that all waste is household waste, this bias remains acceptable. For the same amount of stored waste, the methane production calculated by LandGEM model will be 4 times higher in Guadeloupe than in drier areas.