Landfill Final Cover Systems Design for Arid Areas Using the HELP Model: A Case Study in the Babylon Governorate, Iraq

Ali Chabuk, Nadhir Al-Ansari, Karwan Alkaradaghi, Abdulla Mustafa Muhamed Al-Rawabdeh, Jan Laue, Hussain Musa Hussain, Roland Pusch and Sven Knutsson
Additional contact information
Ali Chabuk: Department of Civil Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden
Nadhir Al-Ansari: Department of Civil Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden
Karwan Alkaradaghi: Department of Civil Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden
Abdulla Mustafa Muhamed Al-Rawabdeh: Abdullah Mustafa Muhamed Al-Rawabdeh, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Yarmouk University, Irbid, P:BOX 566, 21163, Jordan
Jan Laue: Department of Civil Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden
Hussain Musa Hussain: Remote Sensing Center, University of Kufa, Kufa, 54003, Iraq
Roland Pusch: Department of Civil Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden
Sven Knutsson: Department of Civil Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-27

Abstract: The main purpose of selecting proper designs for landfills is to accommodate quantities of waste without having a negative effect on the surrounding environment and human health. The Babylon Governorate (province) in Iraq was taken as an example of an arid area with very shallow groundwater and where irregular waste disposal sites had developed that had not been subject to international standards when they were selected for landfill use. In the current study, the suggested design for landfills is a base liner and final cover system. In this suggested design, the final cover system allows for three scenarios. The first scenario considers an evapotranspiration soil cover (ET) (capillary barriers type), the second scenario is a modified cover design of “RCRA Subtitle D”, and the third scenario is a combination of the first and second scenarios. The HELP 3.95 D model was applied to the selected landfill sites in the governorate to check if there was any penetration of the leachate that might in future percolate from the landfill’s bottom barrier layer in arid areas. The results from the suggested landfill design showed that there was no leachate percolation from the bottom barrier layer using the second and third scenarios. For the first scenario, however, there was a small amount of leachate through the bottom barrier layer in the years 2013 and 2014.

Keywords: landfill; suggested design; cover systems; HELP 3.95 D model; arid area; shallow groundwater (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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