Integrated Process for Landfill and Leachate Management: Experimentally Informed Design of Waste-to-Energy Conversation for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Mitigation

With her project, Research Assistant Professor Goldfarb searches for a scheme to reduce the energy required to manage MSW and leachate landfills and develop new ways and materials to reduce waste and slow the spread of contaminants.

Goldfarb will addresses municipal solid waste (MSW) management in urban areas by using pyrolysis to produce energy and biochar, which is converted to activated carbons for leachate treatment. This integrated process improves the economic viability of MSW management while providing an environmentally compliant, cost-effective long-term strategy for solid waste management.

The goal is to identify an environmentally compliant, cost-effective long-term strategy for solid waste management.

Professor Goldfarb is currently in Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship to continue this research.

Student Contributors

Chitanya Gopu majors in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Energy Technologies.

Publications

Upneja, A., Dou, G., Gopu, C., Johnson, C., Newman, A., Suleimenov, A & Goldfarb, J. (2016). Sustainable waste mitigation: biotemplated nanostructured ZnO for photocatalytic water treatment via extraction of biofuels from hydrothermal carbonization of banana stalk. RSC Adances, 6, 92813-92823.

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