First-order mathematical modeling of biogas production: Application for the controlled landfill of fez

A huge quantity of biogas is emitted from non-regulated municipal solid waste landfill to the atmosphere. Many researchers have been done with the purpose to estimate the quantity of generated methane gas, capture, and to use this energy source to produce electricity or heat. Since then, many models have been developed in this direction. Mathematical modeling for methane production is a tool used to project methane generation over time from a mass of buried waste. These models are used for energy exploitation, sizing of biogas collection systems and for regulatory purposes. Several types of mathematical models are developed to estimate the production of biogas. Those are generally based on zero-order, first-order and second-order decomposition kinetics. Others are digital in nature and are very accurate, but their use requires several inputs that are not always available to managers. First-order models are the most used because of the tradeoff between accuracy of results and ease of use. Those are often used to respond to requests for national inventories, for life cycle analysis and to comply with corresponding regulations. First-order models can describe multiphase structures containing several categories of buried materials, and provide better prediction accuracy than zero-order models. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the amount of methane generation from Fez landfill, which is the first largest landfill in Morocco. To achieve that, the first-order model was used to predict the amount of methane generation.