Abstract :
[en] During this thesis, we aimed at demonstrating the value of geophysical methods for a waste deposit characterization in the context of landfill mining, both for energy and raw materials valorization. Our preliminary analysis of the literature revealed that a multi-scale and multi-method investigation strategy was required. We also noticed an increasing interest in geoelectrical methods for the waste water content estimation, and for the monitoring of water content changes due to infiltration through the cover layer and water recirculation operation in bioreactor landfills.
Firstly, we used the electromagnetic (EM) and magnetic mapping methods, quick and cost effective, to determine the site horizontal boundaries of our test-landfill. We combined the Horizontal to Vertical Noise Spectral Ratio (HVNSR) and the Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW) seismic methods to estimate the thickness of this particularly deep deposit site. We also used the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) to estimate the depth to water table and characterize the humidity of the unsaturated zone.
Secondly, we investigated the suitability of geoelectrical methods (ERT, and borehole EM) to obtain spatially distributed information over the waste water content. For this purpose, petrophysical laws (established with laboratory experiments on waste samples) controlling the effects of water content, density and temperature on the bulk electrical resistivity of humid waste were established.
Thirdly, we used numerical simulations to highlight several pitfalls occurring during the ERT monitoring of fresh water infiltration through a landfill cover layer. The effects on the interpretation of electrical resistivity changes of the ERT resolution, the background condition heterogeneity, the uncertainty on water content computation, and the often neglected dilution, were considered to extract the maximum information from the data and avoid over-interpretation.
Lastly, we combined the ERT and the distributed temperature monitoring methods to evaluate the efficiency of horizontal drains, which are commonly used to regulate water content in a bioreactor. This tools provided us with valuable insight on the drain design suitability (diameter, depth, length, injected volume, etc.), the injected water flow behavior (waste anisotropy, heterogeneity, and the effect of vertical gas wells), and the humidification of the dry waste material efficiency.
Taken together, our results have shown that geophysics represents a valuable approach for landfill investigation, provided that a special care is given to the data analysis. We thus finally discussed several interpretations limitation and proposed some insights to overcome them.
