Morphological characterisation of MSW landfills

Abstract Landfill characterisation has been carried out by analyses of waste samples collected from different depths in the municipal landfill of Torino. The main result has been that landfill drilling to collect samples can provide useful information about landfill morphology: e.g., inside a landfill, water lenses can form and their origin can strongly influence organic matter degradation rates and, therefore, biogas generation and composition. In addition, the investigation suggests that landfill behaviour and biogas production can be predicted in a more reliable way if very simple chemico-physical analyses of collected samples are performed.