Mathematical modeling and numerical simulation of a bioreactor landfill using Feel++

TL;DR

This paper develops a complex multiphysics mathematical model for bioreactor landfills, incorporating heat transfer, chemical reactions, and multiphase flows, and implements it using the Feel++ library for simulation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive coupled model for bioreactor landfills and demonstrates its implementation with Feel++, enabling advanced numerical simulations.

Findings

Preliminary simulations validate the model.

Heuristic parameter analysis conducted.

Framework facilitates future detailed studies.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to describe the functioning of a bioreactor landfill, that is a waste management facility in which biodegradable waste is used to generate methane. The simulation of a bioreactor landfill is a very complex multiphysics problem in which bacteria catalyze a chemical reaction that starting from organic carbon leads to the production of methane, carbon dioxide and water. The resulting model features a heat equation coupled with a non-linear reaction equation describing the chemical phenomena under analysis and several advection and advection-diffusion equations modeling multiphase flows inside a porous environment representing the biodegradable waste. A framework for the approximation of the model is implemented using Feel++, a C++ open-source library to solve Partial Differential Equations. Some heuristic considerations on the quantitative values of the parameters in the model are discussed and preliminary numerical simulations are presented.