The document addresses solid waste and land pollution, defining solid waste as unwanted or useless materials from various sources, including households and industries. It outlines solid waste management processes and methods, highlighting the importance of proper disposal and treatment techniques such as incineration and composting. Additionally, it discusses the causes and effects of land pollution, emphasizing its adverse impacts on climate, biodiversity, and public health while proposing various remediation strategies.

1. POLLUTION CONTROL
(Solid waste and Land pollution)

2. Solid Waste
• Solid waste can also be defined as the organic and inorganic waste
materials (in the solid phase) produced by households, commercial &
industrial establishments that have no economic value to the owner.
• Any waste other than human excreta, urine & waste water, is called
solid waste. Solid waste generally includes-house sweeping, kitchen
waste, garden waste, cattle dung & waste from cattle sheds, agro
waste, broken glass, metal, waste paper, plastic, cloths, rubber, waste
from markets & shopping areas, hotels, etc.
7/8/2024 2

3. • aaaaaaa
7/8/2024 3

4. 7/8/2024 4
Figure 1. Trend of solid waste generated between 2009 – 2013 (Source: Zoomlion, (2013))
Samuel Twumasi Amoah et al. Solid Waste Management
in Urban Areas of Ghana: Issues and Experiences from
Wa. Journal of Environment Pollution and Human Health,
2014, Vol. 2, No. 5, 110-117. doi:10.12691/jephh-2-5-3
© The Author(s) 2014. Published by Science and
Education Publishing.

5. Solid Waste Management
• Solid waste: is the unwanted or useless solid materials generated from
combined residential, industrial and commercial activities in a given area.
• Regulatory definition in CERCLA and RCRA
Solid waste refers to garbage, refuse, sludge from a wastewater treatment
plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility, and
other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained
gaseous material resulting from industrial, commercial, mining, and
agricultural operations.
• CERCLA: stands for ‘Comprehensive Environmental Response
Compensation and Liability Act’
• RCRA: The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
7/8/2024 5

6. Solid Waste Management
• Solid waste may be categorized:
According to its origin: domestic, industrial, commercial,
construction or institutional.
According to its contents: organic, glass, metal, plastics, paper
etc.
According to hazard potential: toxic, non-toxic, flammable,
radioactive, infectious etc.
• Management of solid waste reduces or eliminates adverse impacts on
the environment and human health.
• Management of solid waste also supports economic development
and improved quality of life.
7/8/2024 6

7. Solid Waste Management
A number of processes are involved in effectively managing
waste for a municipality. These include:
• monitoring,
• collection,
• transport,
• processing,
• recycling and
• disposal.
7/8/2024 7

8. Solid Waste management: The waste
management hierarchy
7/8/2024 8

9. Methods of Solid Waste Disposal and
Management
• Open burning
• Dumping into the sea
• Sanitary Landfills
• Incineration
• Compositing
• Ploughing
• Hog feeding
• Grinding and discharging into sewers
• Salvaging
• Fermentation and biological digestion
7/8/2024 9

10. Solid Waste Management: Thermal
Treatment
Incineration:
• The most common thermal treatment process.
• This is the combustion of waste in the presence of oxygen.
• This method may be used as a means of recovering energy to be used
in heating or supply of electricity.
Pyrolysis or gasification:
• Pyrolysis and gasification are similar processes.
• Both decompose organic waste by exposing it to high temperatures
and low amount of oxygen.
7/8/2024 10

11. Solid Waste Management: Thermal
Treatment
• Gasification uses a low oxygen environment while pyrolysis allows no
oxygen.
• These techniques use heat and an oxygen starved environment to
convert biomass into other forms.
• Gasification is advantages since it allows for the incineration of waste
with energy recovery and without the air pollution that is
characteristic of other incineration methods.
7/8/2024 11

12. Solid Waste management: Dumps and
Landfills
Sanitary landfills:
• This are designed to generally reduce or eliminate the risks
that waste disposal may pose to the public health and
environment.
• For example, the area may be composed of clay, soil which is
fairly impermeable due to its tightly packed particles, or the
area may be characterized by a low water table and an
absence of surface water bodies thus preventing the threat
of water contamination.
7/8/2024 12

13. Solid Waste management: Dumps and
Landfills
Bioreactor landfills:
• They use enhanced microbiological processes to accelerate the
decomposition of waste.
• The main controlling factor is the constant addition of liquid to
maintain optimum moisture for microbial digestion.
• This liquid is usually added by re-circulating the landfill leachate.
7/8/2024 13

14. Solid Waste management: Dumps and
Landfills
A typical sanitary Landfill for solid waste
7/8/2024 14
Gas Vent
Liner
Daily refuse Undisturbed
ground
Refuse
compacted
and covered
Leachate
collection
system

15. Solid Waste Management: Biological
Waste Treatment
Composting:
• Composting is the controlled aerobic decomposition of organic matter
by the action of microorganisms and small invertebrates.
Anaerobic digestion:
• Anaerobic digestion like composting uses biological processes to
decompose organic waste.
• However, where composting can use a variety of microbes and must
have air, anaerobic digestion uses bacteria and an oxygen free
environment to decompose the waste.
7/8/2024 15

16. Land Pollution
• Land pollution is the degradation of Earth's
land surfaces often caused by human activities
and their misuse of land resources or
• Land pollution may be understood as the
deterioration of the earth’s land surfaces often
directly or indirectly as a result of man’s
activities.
• It occurs when there is a build-up (in soils) of
persistent toxic compounds, chemicals, salts,
radioactive materials, or disease causing
agents, which have adverse effects on plant
growth and animal health.
7/8/2024 16

17. Causes of Land Pollution
• Degenerative Actions
encompass a lot of human
activities, including
• deforestation,
• overuse of pesticides,
insecticides, herbicides and
chemical fertilizers.
• mining,
• desertification,
• inefficient and / or inadequate
waste treatment, landfill, litter,
etc.
7/8/2024 17

18. Causes of Land Pollution cont.d
• Inefficient Use of land amounts to wastage, and hence
shortage of land; and it is precisely during such conditions
that man has to resort to measure such as deforestation and
others to meet his needs.
• Soil Pollution is when the top-most soil layer of land is
destroyed or polluted.
7/8/2024 18

19. Effects of Land Pollution
On Climate
7/8/2024 19

20. Effects of Land Pollution on Climate cont.d
• Land pollution leads to loss of the forest cover of Earth.
• This is in turn going to affect the vegetation.
• The effect of all different kinds of pollution will eventually
lead to problems like acid rains, greenhouse effect, global
warming.
7/8/2024 20

21. Effects of Land Pollution cont.d
Extension of Species
Species are pushed towards endangerment and extinction
primarily by two processes.
• Habitat fragmentation: is the fragmentation of the natural
habitat of an organism; caused primary by urban sprawl.
• Habitat destruction: on the other hand is when land clearing
adversely affects especially animals such that their natural
habitat is lost.
Both actions can cause some species to go extinct and others
to become invasive.
7/8/2024 21

22. Effects of Land Pollution cont.d
• Biomagnification (Bio-amplification)
Process in which certain non-biodegradable substance (toxic
pollutants such as pesticides) go on accumulating in the food-
chain.
The most common example is of methyl mercury in fish and
mercury in eagles. Not only does biomagnification put the
particular species at risk, it also puts all the species above and
below it at risk, and ultimately affects the food pyramid.
7/8/2024 22

23. Bio magnification cont.d
7/8/2024 23
Source:
https://afrspanishteam.com/maple-
grove/what-is-an-example-of-
biomagnification.php

24. Bio magnification cont.d
• The small fish and zooplankton eat vast quantities of
phytoplankton.
• In doing so, any toxic chemicals accumulated by the
phytoplankton are further concentrated in the bodies of the
animals that eat them.
• This is repeated at each step in the food chain.
This process of increasing concentration through the food
chain is known as biomagnification.
7/8/2024 24

25. Bio magnification cont.d
• The top predators at the end of a long food chain, such as
lake trout, large salmon and fish-eating gulls, may
accumulate concentrations of a toxic chemical high enough
to cause serious deformities or death even though the
concentration of the chemical in the open water is extremely
low.
• The concentration of some chemicals in the fatty tissues of
top predators can be millions of times higher than the
concentration in the open water.
7/8/2024 25

26. Effects of Land Pollution on
Biodiversity
Species extinction and biomagnification is going to overthrow
the balance of nature very significantly.
The main reason for this is the disturbance created in the food
chain.
• A typical example, on account of biomagnification of mercury
in eagles, they might go extinct in the subsequent years.
• However, we know eagles prey on snakes.
• Less or no eagles will then result in large number of snakes.
7/8/2024 26

27. Effects of Land Pollution cont.d
Urban Effects
• Public health problems.
• Pollution of drinking water sources.
• Foul smell and release of gases.
• Waste management problems.
7/8/2024 27

28. Effects of Land Pollution cont.d
Agricultural Effects
• Decrease soil fertility.
• Reduced crop yield.
• Larger loss of soil and nutrient.
• Reduced nitrogen fixation.
7/8/2024 28

29. Land Pollution Control
• Bioremediation.
• Phytoremediation.
• Reduction of toxic materials.
• Recycling waste materials.
• Proper waste management.
7/8/2024 29

30. Management of Polluted Land
Bioremediation
• A treatment process that
uses living organisms (eg.
microorganisms; yeast, fungi
or bacteria: fungi or plants)
to break down or degrade
hazardous substance into less
toxic or non-toxic substance
(CO2 or H2O).
7/8/2024 30
Microorganisms
consumes oil or
other organic
contaminants
Microorganisms
digests the oil or
contaminant and
produce CO2 & H2O
Microorganisms
releases the CO2
& H2O

31. Why Bioremediation
• Most approaches convert harmful pollutants into relatively
harmless ones such as carbon dioxide, chloride, water, and
simple organic molecules
• Processes are generally cleaner.
• Natural process.
• Complete destruction is possible.
• Less expensive.
7/8/2024 31

32. Bioremediation Techniques
7/8/2024 32

33. Bioremediation Techniques
7/8/2024 Safety & Pollution Control_ CHE 33
• Phytoremediation
• Mycoremediation
• Bioventilation (in-situ)
• Bioleaching
• Land farming
• Vermiremediation
• Composting
• Bioaugmentation
• Rhizofiltration
• Biopiles (ex-situ)
• Biostimulation

34. In-situ-Bioremediation
Biostimulation (stimulates biological activity)
Bioventing (Inject air/nutrients into unsaturated zone –
good for midweight petroleum, jet fuel) to induce aerobic
biodegradation. The injected air provide oxygen for native
microorganism to use in the biodegradation of
contaminants.
Biosparging (Inject air/nutrients into unsaturated and
saturated zones eg. For BTEXN).
Bioaugmentation (inoculates soil with microbes).
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327727824_Bioremediation_An
_Eco-sustainable_Approach_for_Restoration_of_Contaminated_Sites
7/8/2024 34

35. Ex-situ-Bioremediation
Slurry-phase
• Soil combined with water/additives in tank, microorganisms,
nutrients, oxygen added.
Solid-phase
• Land-farming: soil put on pad, leachate collected.
• Soil biopiles: soil heaped, air added.
• Composting: biodegradable waste mixed with bulking agent.
• Biofiltration: bioreactor containing microorganisms is charged
with the contaminated soil.
7/8/2024 Safety & Pollution Control_ CHE 459 35

36. Phytoremediation
Refers to the use of plants to bind up land pollutants.
• Plants, soil and microbes in the soil work together to
determine which metals and nutrients plants take up from
the soil.
• Some plants excrete a variety of different chemicals into the
soil, some of which act as signals to soil organisms.
Rhizofiltration
Rhizofiltration is a form of phytoremediation that involves
filtering contaminated groundwater, surface water and
wastewater through a mass of roots to remove toxic
substances or excess nutrients.
7/8/2024 36

37. Rhizofiltration
7/8/2024 37

38. Biostimulation
• Biostimulation refers to the addition of rate limiting nutrients
like phosphorus, nitrogen, oxygen, electron donors to
severely polluted sites to stimulate the existing bacteria to
degrade the hazardous and toxic contaminants.
• https://medcraveonline.com/JMEN/bioaugmentation-and-
biostimulation-a-potential-strategy-for-environmental-
remediation.html
7/8/2024 38