Test: Waste Disposal by Sanitary Landfilling - Civil Engineering (CE) MCQ

Open burning usually results in the reduction of the volume of urban waste thereby, also making it easy for rag picking, whereas, bulldozer leveling is usually used for compaction of the waste and doesn’t reduce the volume, fertilizers are not used to reduce the volume of urban waste, incineration is not used at the disposal sites.

Low lying areas are usually used to dispose the urban waste which is present near the sea level whereas, any type of waste cannot be disposed of in residential areas of towns and cities or industrial areas which generate a lot of waste like glass, domestic waste, food waste, metals, tin, leaves etc. are referred to as urban waste or in rural areas, as it may pose a threat to the humans and organism living in those areas.

Heavy metal treatment can’t be used for pre-treatment of solid waste as it poses a great threat to the environment because of its toxicity, whereas, mechanical treatment, biological treatment, thermal treatment to reduce the amount of biodegradable organic matter to reduce the environmental pollution.

The major environmental concern related to landfill is the discharge of leachates into the immediate environment which pose a great threat to the environment, so, the major concern is to control it, whereas, limited space, technology and man-power do not pose environmental threat.

Aerobic compost is not used for degradation of waste in anaerobic phase, whereas, anaerobic phase, methanogenic fermentation and acid fermentation leads to decrease in Ph of leachate.

Hydrolysis, solubilisation of the salts present in the waste and biological degradation are the methods the can be used to regulate the transfer of mass from waste to leaching water. Whereas, addition of heavy metals leads to toxicity.

In-situ aeration uses a system which pours in gas to the landfill in more controlled manner, whereas, recycling, Vermicomposting and incineration doesn’t use gas to degrade the solid waste.

Ground water monitoring, Landfill sealing, Quality of leachate environmental monitoring methods used for measuring the landfill process efficacy in a long term basis, whereas, biodegradation is not an environmental monitoring method but it’s a natural method of degrading wastes.

Open burning at the disposal sites causes severe air pollution due to incomplete combustion of the urban waste. And incomplete combustion is the result of improper supply of oxygen. It reduces the volume of the waste but results in pollution. So, it definitely causes air pollution and not noise pollution.

Aerobic degradation of waste in landfills is usually of very less time due to very high demand of oxygen which limits the quantity available of aerobic degradation.