Landfill construction

Landfill base liner system:

The purpose of the base liner system is to prevent contaminants released by the landfill body from entering the underlying soil and to allow the controlled collection and drainage of landfill leachate for subsequent treatment. The German Technical Instructions for Municipal Waste prescribe controlled base liner systems for Class I and Class II landfills.

The landfill base lining system consists of geosynthetic liner materials which protect the underlying soil from contaminants released by the landfill body and provide a tight seal against the underground. Both heating wedge welders and hand extruders lend themselves to reliable and leak-free seaming of the liner sheets. Heating wedge welders allow a test channel to be produced in the weld seam. This test channel can then be pressurized for weld quality testing. In this way, discontinuities in the weld seam can be readily detected.

Another advantage of the wedge welding technology is that the machines move by themselves along the overlapped liner sheets and thus need not be guided by hand.

In order to minimize harmful environmental effects, landfills use a so-called multi-barrier concept. This means that several independent safety concepts (in this case barriers) must be in place to reliably rule out environmental damage even when one of the barriers fails. The barriers are hierarchically structured.

First barrier.

Solid waste pretreatment by removing hazardous fractions, for instance, chemical-physical treatment, combustion, composting

Second barrier.

Site selection, selection criteria being suitable geological and hydrogeological conditions such as the presence of water-impervious strata.

Third barrier.

Configuration of the landfill body: Due to the chemical, biological and physical processes occurring, the landfill body must be constructed such as to ensure its structural stability and prevent gas releases to the atmosphere. Moreover, it must be protected from water infiltration to reduce leachate formation.

Fourth barrier.

Landfill base liner system and leachate treatment to prevent contaminated leachate from entering the groundwater.

Fifth barrier.

Cover liner to prevent the ingress of rainwater and uncontrolled releases of landfill gas.

Sixth barrier.

Post-use care and repairs are required even after the landfill has been closed. A landfill should be monitored for 50 to 100 years after its closure. All systems must therefore be constructed such as to ensure ease of repair, e.g. the piping of the leachate collection system. Monitoring for pollutant emissions must be continued.

The controlled landfill is an indispensable part of the integrated waste management concept. Waste routed to disposal must be stored such as to preclude any harmful effects on the groundwater or the biosphere. This results in exacting requirements for site selection and landfill engineering. Furthermore, existing landfills often no longer meet the state of the art. If they leak, securing measures and/or emission monitoring are required.

Companies installing geotextile liner systems in landfills must be approved fabricators/installers in terms of the Water Resources Act (WHG §19). The plastic welding machines used for welding landfill liners must meet exacting demands. Munsch welding extruders fully live up to the required standards.

Landfill construction is, however, not the only application using plastic sheeting for sealing purposes. These days, plastic liner systems are used in all applications where the escape of liquids to the environment or the infiltration of liquids from the surroundings must be avoided. This applies to both the public and private sectors and ranges from the garden pond or the swimming pool via the sealing of roadways and unloading areas through to base sealing systems of golf courses or tunnels.

Plastic liners used in these applications are made of LDPE, HDPE, PE, PET, PVC, PUL or PUR.

In hydraulic and civil engineering applications, industrial plastics are increasingly used for the collection, drainage, containment and conveyance of water and waste water. Moreover, the prevention of groundwater contamination with leachate is gaining growing importance in source water protection areas. The plastic liner systems used in these applications usually come in sheet form and must be joined such as to provide an absolutely liquid-tight sealing system.

Reflecting the latest state of the art, Munsch plastic welding machines ensure proper seaming of plastic liner systems in hydraulic and civil engineering applications and help assure conformance with the legislative requirements (e.g. WHG § 19), the requirements of the DVS guidelines and the applicable codes and standards.

Application examples:

Services for you

Worldwide distribution

Munsch Company is a worldwide operating business. Here are our worldwide contacts that are responsible for your application with plastic welding extruders.

To the sales

Munsch
Chemical Pumps

Among the production of plastic welders, Munsch Company also produces pumps of the latest generation. Just come in and have a look!

Munsch Pumps