Research Information System
Deutsche Montan Technologie, pp.27, Bochum, 2005
Ennigerloh waste dump site was originally an open-cast mining area for the cement
firm Anneliese Zement AG. Later, this site is used as dump area for mining debris. In 1981 it is decided to use the site as waste dump area. Since 1996 the
site is used by AWG (Abfallwirtschaftsgesellschaft Warendorf mbH) for waste disposal.
The organic part of the waste, which is disposed to the Ennigerloh waste dump
site, forms biogas including methane via anaerobic degradation processes. Methane
which is odorless can lead to serious problems to the people if no counter measures
are taken:
• There is a risk of suffocation where methane is leaking into the buildings
surrounding the waste dump site.
• Methane is explosive if the concentration in air is in the range of 5 to 15
vol.-%..
There are different techniques, such as building a horizontally interconnected well
network or digging a ditch along the dump site, to control the methane migration
from the waste dump site before reaching the surrounding buildings. In order to
decide which control technique to use depends on behavior of the methane propagation in the subsurface. Therefore, a preliminary study is necessary to investigate
methane propagation in the subsurface for different scenarios. Due to usual complex geology and complex transport processes it is not possible to solve the system
analytically. Numerical simulations can help to get better understanding of these
systems. In the next section two-phase three-component model (2p3c model), which
is used in this work, is described in detail.