Landfill Mining and Reclamation

Basics

• Essentially Strip Mining but of Landfills
• Easier with modern landfills, but can be done with old (even informal) ones.
• In older ones, it can even be of historic value (like a time capsule of sorts, anthropologists, and archeologits do this with old "mounds" with mainly shells and bones of food, but this is a similar modern form)
• Leads to:
  • Recovered Recyclable Materials (Metal, Glass, Plastic, Misc)
  • Recovered Soil/Clay (cover material)
  • Recovered Aggregate Materials
  • Sometimes Methane Gas (if captured and not released)
  • Typically large Sulfur Compound Gasses, and Mixed Chemical Leachate, which is toxic, but can be processed into useful products
  • Refuse Derived Fuel (sort of like biomass, but much more unpredictable)
    • This can in turn be made into Syngas and Slag
• Finally the land is returned to it's natural state and/or develped

Challenges

• Nastiness of the work site
  • Although Dedicated “Work Clothes” / “Junk Clothes” + Boots and a “Wash Out” + swap clothes and boots based Contamination Reduction Zone can help with this
  • Also Automation/Mechanization or things like PAPR Helmets with Granulated Activated Carbon cartridges

Internal Links

• Gasification
• Recycling

External Links

• The Wikipedia Page on Landfill Mining and Reclamation