Environmental and economic assessment of combined biostabilization and landfill for municipal solid waste

Biostabilization can remove considerable amounts of moisture and degradable organic materials from municipal solid waste (MSW), and can therefore be an effective form of pretreatment prior to landfill. The environmental and economic impacts of two combined processes, active stage biostabilization + sanitary landfill (AL), and active and curing stage biostabilization + sanitary landfill (ACL), were compared with sanitary landfill (SL) for MSW with high moisture content. The results indicated that land requirement, leachate generation, and CH(4) emission in the ACL process decreased by 68.6%, 89.1%, and 87.6%, respectively, and the total cost was reduced by 24.1%, compared with SL. This implies that a combined biostabilization and landfill process can be an environmentally friendly and economically feasible alternative to landfill of raw MSW with high moisture content. Sensitivity analysis revealed that treatment capacity and construction costs of biostabilization and the oxidation factor of CH(4) significantly influenced the costs and benefits of the AL and ACL process at an extremely low land price. When the land price was greater than 100 USD m(-2), it became the dominating factor in determining the cost of treatment and disposal, and the total costs of ACL were reduced to less than 40% of those of SL.