Burlington County Bioreactor Landfill

It is of critical importance to local New Jersey municipalities to find ways to maximize the rate of degradation of landfill material. This is important because of the difficulties encountered in finding appropriate locations to build new municipal solid waste landfills in the densely populated northeast corridor, as well as the cost associated with closing landfills.

Operating a landfill as a bioreactor may have numerous benefits, including increased organic degradation rates, a decrease in the strength of leachate after recirculation, and the more effective capture of methane gas produced by microbial degradation processes.

Burlington County currently operates an active landfill as a bioreactor. Operation of the landfill is controlled by the ability to store the generated leachate, and a rational operational design to maximize the effectiveness of this bioreactor would be desirable.

Then Burlington County Resource Recovery Center (BCRRC) and the Rutgers EcoComplex have commissioned this two-year study to analyze operational data collected from the bioreactor and identify data currently missing. A sampling plan to collect a more complete data set will be designed. Laboratory experiments will be conducted to better understand the bioreactor landfill process, specifically processes related to nitrogen transformations and methane gas production. Rutgers will use information from this study as a basis for designing an operational plan for the bioreactor landfill.