Waste Management Project at Jharkhand Koderma – Case Study

Ocean Non Wovens supplied 23200 sqm of Geotextile for a solid waste management project at Koderma, Jharkhand. The project was part of a Jharkhand government initiative to replace open dumping with scientific waste disposal, and the geotextile went into the engineered layers of the new waste facility.

Waste management is a problem across India’s growing towns. Collection, transport, treatment and disposal have not kept up with the waste an expanding urban population produces, and untreated waste dumped in the open pollutes soil, surface water and groundwater and harms people living nearby. Koderma faced the same problem: the town had no scientific method for treating its solid waste, and much of it ended up in open dumps.

Product – Geotextile – 23200sqm

Location – Jharkhand Koderma

Problem

Koderma is a mining town in Jharkhand, known above all for its mica deposits. The local authorities found that the town lacked scientific solid waste management and that the existing dumping site was overloaded. The Jharkhand government started the initiative to improve solid waste disposal, reduce health and environmental hazards, and clean up how waste was handled. It covered the collection, transport, recycling, processing and disposal of waste from homes, streets, shops and workplaces.

An overloaded open dump has no barrier beneath it and no system to collect leachate, the contaminated liquid that forms as rain percolates through waste. That leachate seeps into the ground and nearby water, and the uncovered waste attracts pests, burns and spreads odour.

Solution

A modern engineered landfill is very different from a dump. Waste is placed on a lining system that stops leachate escaping, the leachate is drained and collected for treatment, and the waste is eventually capped. Geosynthetics make up most of these layers, and each type has a specific job:

• Hydraulic barrier: an HDPE geomembrane, often with a geosynthetic clay liner (GCL) beneath it in place of a thick compacted clay layer.
• Drainage: geonets, geocomposites or gravel layers that carry leachate to collection pipes.
• Separation, filtration and protection: non woven geotextiles.
• Reinforcement and erosion control: geogrids and geocells, mainly on slopes and the final cover.

The geotextile supplied for Koderma does the separation, filtration and protection work. It is permeable, so it is not the barrier itself. In a landfill it is used to:

• Protect the geomembrane: laid over the liner, a heavy non woven cushions it against stones in the drainage layer and the weight of waste above, which prevents punctures.
• Filter the drainage layer: wrapped around drainage gravel and pipes, it lets leachate through while holding back fine particles that would otherwise clog the system.
• Separate layers: it keeps soil, drainage stone and waste from mixing, in the base liner and in the final cover.

Lining systems also need careful design for stability. Smooth interfaces between geosynthetic layers can have low shear strength, and the most common failure modes in geosynthetic-lined landfills are sliding along the base liner (a deep-seated failure through the waste and liner) or slips in the final cover. Interface shear testing (ASTM D5321) and the right choice of textured liners and geotextiles on slopes deal with this.

For Koderma, a properly lined and drained facility replaces an open dump with a site that contains its leachate and protects the groundwater and land around the town.