Good practices in landfill odour emission management: case study of borgo montello (Italy)

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management facilities can be source of an adverse environmental impact, as emissions of biogas, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and other odorants. Particularly, MSW landfills are among the existing types of industrial installations which are mostly related to significant odour emissions. The particular composition of odorants outcome from landfills causes the earlier perception of odour nuisances, which are perceived at very low concentrations. Therefore, the installation of tools for odour impact mitigation is of primary importance. With the aim of identifying the most suitable strategies and measures for the odour control, the implementation of simulation model for the impact prediction becomes necessary. In this study, it was evaluated the efficiency of different environmental protection practices for the control of odour emission from the MSW landfill plant located in Borgo Montello (Latina), in the Central Italy. An odour sampling campaign in the area of the landfill and in the surroundings was specifically conducted. The samples were analyzed in terms of odour concentration by the Laboratory of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering Division (SEED) of the University of Salerno. The odour measurements were carried out by dynamic olfactometer (T08, Ecoma GmbH, Germany) according to EN 13725:2003, using the ‘yes/no’ method. The dispersion model CALPUFF was implemented in order to simulate the odor emissions and diffusion in different scenarios. The outputs of the model were evaluated taken as references "Guideline for the characterization, analysis and permission of gas emissions into the atmosphere of the activities to impact odour" (Lombardia Region, 2009) and the “Environmental Guidelines of the United Kingdom (UK-EA) IPPC-H4”. The results of the different scenarios, in terms of odour concentrations, were compared to identify the best practices, which allow to achieve a sustainable and significant reduction of odour emission for the analyzed landfil