The use of Exposed Geomembrane Covers (EGC) has been implemented throughout the various waste handling and management industries as temporary or final covers placed on top and around landfills in the early 1990's. They have been designed and installed in landfill environments using various material types of geomembranes, liners, and even artificial turf. One major issue, concern, and design challenge is proper anchoring and ballast to protect the ballast covers from damage, partial or complete dislodgement due to wind uplift. Current methods for protecting and securing EGC ballast covers from wind uplift is expensive and does not serve any other need. Due to the high cost of installation and ballast covers plus other design challenges landfill owners and operators are skeptical to the use of exposed ballast covers. The invention disclosed herein provides incentives to promote the installation and use of leachate ballast covers or modification of existing exposed ballast covers while providing advantages as described herein.
The collection and removal of liquid leachate in leachate evaporator ponds has been successfully used at landfill facilities and in industries handling contaminated liquids in arid and very dry areas of the United States where liquid evaporation is at its highest potential. However, at times available land for the location and construction of a leachate pond is limited or not available or where there are state and local permitting challenges. The concept and invention disclosed herein resolve the design challenges of exposed cover ballast and available land for leachate ponds. The invention will allow landfill facilities to store leachate on-top of existing landfill waste footprints to create more effective ballast on the surface of exposed landfill covers and in-turn more efficient evaporation of leachate due to an increase in the surface area of the liquid exposed to the atmosphere. This new ballast design and method for EGC or other landfill covers allows owners and operators of waste facilities to increase the amount and rate of leachate evaporation while avoiding third party construction, transportation and handling costs associated with the collection, removal, transportation, and off-site disposal of leachate. The invention reduces the cost of expensive anchoring and ballast for traditional exposed covers of geomembrane or artificial turf and significantly off-sets significant transportation and rising treatment costs at wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). The invention can also be retrofitted to any approved landfill final closure cover or temporary closure cover.
The invention disclosed herein provides an alternative to the handling of leachate and treatment of contaminated liquids that are proving to be huge issues for landfill facilities. Recent environmental concerns of handling leachate producing increasing amounts of perfluoroalkyls and polyfluoroalkyls substances (PFAS), foam, odor, and other contaminates have resulted in WWTP's rejecting further treatment. Additionally, current leachate evaporator pond designs and functions are at times inadequate and have various limitations. The inventive embodiments of the leachate ballast exposed covers disclosed herein provide the environmental industry with solutions to exposed cover ballast design issues and leachate treatment concerns that are cost effective while maintaining landfill compliance. The inventive embodiments provide improved solutions that are economical, operationally friendly and effective.
The invention disclosed herein includes apparatus and a method for collecting leachate and storing it to provide ballast on top of exposed landfill covers at a landfill. A control berm is built on top of the exposed landfill cover forming a barrier for ponding leachate liquid. Leachate is collected from the waste interred at the landfill through known leachate collection system methods and apparatus and transported or deposited on the top surface of a landfill cover thereby resulting in the impoundment and ponding of the leachate on top of the landfill cover and providing ballast to keep the landfill cover in place and minimizing, if not preventing, wind uplift or shearing of the cover. By impounding and storing the leachate liquid in this fashion, the surface area of the leachate and air boundary interface is greatly increased over typical sized retention ponds, thereby providing for increased evaporation rates of leachate. As leachate is evaporated, additional liquid leachate may be transferred to the impoundment area on top of the cover providing the ability for continuous evaporation operations, while also maintaining ballast for preventing wind uplift, wind shear, or other damage to the landfill cover on which the liquid leachate is impounded.
By incorporating the disclosed ballast leachate evaporation apparatus and method with existing and proposed waste site designs, waste site owners can now benefit by installing EGC earlier to capture savings from leachate treatment. This cost savings approach to increase stability for exposed covers can off-set all exposed cover costs through eliminating third party treatment, transportation, and disposal of on-site leachate. By creating this incentive earlier in operation, owners can also show earlier benefits resulting from: better methane gas collection, reduced leachate generation, reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) and greenhouse gas emissions and reduced landfill gas odors. The ponded leachate as part of the ballast located on top of the existing landfill can be retrofitted and pumped directly into current leachate recirculation trenches. This invention also allows new horizontal or vertical leachate recirculation trenches and to be installed under the evaporation ponds where the ballast leachate is pumped into the recirculation trenches to additionally control off-site costs and treatment.
The details of one or more implementations are set forth in the drawings included in this application and which are further described below. Other features, objects, and advantages of the inventive embodiments disclosed herein will be apparent from the description and figures.
For a more complete understanding of this disclosure and its features, reference is now made to the following description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
Control berm 40 may be formed or constructed from clay material, sand, soil, rubble, waste materials, asphalt plastics, metals, concrete or other known materials capable of being formed into berm 40 for the purpose of creating an evaporative pond for impounding leachate, water and other fluids 45 for the apparatus and method disclosed in this application. Berm 40 may be formed as desired and covered with a berm liner 22 (as shown in
Additional waste treatment options may be used in conjunction with the various embodiments of the invention disclosed herein. For example, precipitates, dissolved solids or suspended solids remaining in pond 50 after liquid leachate 45 has evaporated may be removed by the landfill operator and taken to a waste treatment facility for further processing or landfilling. Optionally, leachate 45 collected from landfill 10, and prior to transfer into pond 50, may be treated with known wastewater treatment techniques such as filtration, rapid sand filtration, cartridge, and/or activated carbon filtration to treat leachate 45 prior to impoundment in evaporative pond 50. Such pre-impoundment processing would assist in the removal and recovery of suspended and dissolved solids from leachate 45 and reduce the volume of suspended and dissolved solid residue that collects on in the pond 50 after evaporation of liquid leachate 45.
Additional leachate treatment options may be used in conjunction with the various embodiments of the invention disclosed herein. For example, ponded leachate used as ballast to the evaporation ponds may be pumped from the ponds to enhance leachate recirculation were approved at any such waste facility. The ponded ballast leachate will be controlled and pumped to any currently installed leachate recirculation systems. Additionally, new leachate recirculation horizontal trenches or vertical trenches can be installed under and prior to the Ballast Leachate Evaporation Exposed Landfill Cover. A piping system and network will distribute the pumped ballast leachate into the leachate recirculation system.
Additional leachate evaporation treatment options may be used in conjunction with the various embodiments of the invention disclosed herein. For example, incorporating Enhanced Leachate Evaporation with Heat Induced Acceleration Process options as disclosed in U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 63/092,311 filed Oct. 15, 2020, and entitled “ Enhanced Leachate Evaporation Heat Induced Acceleration Process” the disclosure of which has been incorporated by reference herein. These enhanced heat induced options include heat generated from one or more heat sources such as lamps, industrial high strength lights, heated air captured from landfill gas flare operations, flame/flare fueled from landfill gas or natural gas, which are proximally located to the leachate pond to accelerate evaporation of the leachate contained in the leachate pond.
It is also to be understood that the terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting. As used in this specification, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” include plural referents unless the content clearly indicates otherwise.
Although the present disclosure has been described in detail, various changes, substitutions, and alterations may be made herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure as defined by the appended claims. Moreover, the scope of the present application is not intended to be limited to the embodiments of the process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, means, methods and steps described in the specification. As one of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate from the disclosure, processes, machines, manufacture, compositions of matter, means, methods, or steps, presently existing or later to be developed that perform substantially the same function or achieve substantially the same result as the corresponding embodiments described herein may be utilized according to the present disclosure.
The application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 63/092,303 filed Oct. 15, 2020 and entitled “ Apparatus And Method For Ballast Leachate Evaporation For Exposed Landfill Covers,” which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The application also claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 63/092,311 filed Oct. 15, 2020, and entitled “ Enhanced Leachate Evaporation Heat Induced Acceleration Process” which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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63092303 | Oct 2020 | US | |
63092311 | Oct 2020 | US |