Better decisions often begin with a closer look at the information, materials and systems already shaping waste management operations. Two new EREF resources do exactly that, examining very different questions with a common goal: helping the industry better understand what鈥檚 already there and what it can tell us.
New Report: PFAS in Geosynthetics
Geotextiles, geomembranes, drainage materials, pipes and other polymeric products are integral parts of modern landfill infrastructure among other applications. A new EREF report examines what existing research tells us about PFAS associated with these materials, including how PFAS may enter products during manufacturing, what compounds have been detected, and what is known about their potential environmental behavior.
Available research has detected PFAS in tested geosynthetic materials, including short- and ultrashort-chain compounds. But important questions remain about how common different PFAS sources are across products, how these compounds behave over decades of service, and how much installed geosynthetics may contribute to PFAS measured in the environment.
For landfill owners and operators, engineers, consultants and environmental professionals, those uncertainties are important. As the industry continues to investigate PFAS in leachate, landfill gas and other environmental media, understanding all potential components of the system can improve monitoring, source attribution, material evaluation and future research.
New EREF-Funded Research: Turning Anaerobic Digester Data into Operating Decisions
Another EREF-funded project asks a different question: Could facilities make more use of information they’re already collecting? Researchers analyzed six years of operating data from a full-scale anaerobic digester processing food waste and animal manure. Machine-learning models used routinely collected operating and feedstock data to predict biogas production, methane percentage and H鈧係, while modeling also identified potential opportunities for operational improvement.
One of the clearest findings was the importance of time. Recent operating history and longer-term system behavior provided information that an individual day’s measurement could not. For operators, that reinforces a practical starting point for more data-driven decision-making: understand the data already being collected, preserve their history, and examine patterns over time before assuming that better insight requires entirely new systems or infrastructure.
EREF’s new聽Turning Operating Data into Operating Decisions聽Executive Brief distills the findings for industry readers, while the full grant report provides the underlying research, modeling and analysis.