BIOCOVER. "Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emission from European Landfills by use of Engineered Biocovers".

Landfills containing organic wastes produce biogas, and are significant sources of methane which contributes to climate changes. Some landfills are not or cannot be utilized for landfill gas. In these cases the gas is flared with risk of producing toxic combustion products, or is just escaping the landfill to the atmosphere.
Experiments have documented that a very high methane oxidation rate can be obtained in bio-covers, high enough to significant reduce the methane emission from the landfill. Bio-covers may also be a very cost-effective supplementary method at landfills with landfill gas utilization, since the efficiency of the gas extraction system often is in the range of 50-60 %. However, the documentation of the efficiency of biocovers has so far not been carried out in full scale
BIOCOVER is a LIFE III Environment project with the full title “Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Landfills by use of Engineered Bio-covers”. The aim of the project is to develop a methodology for reducing methane emission from covered landfills based on microbial methane oxidation in established passively vented biofilter areas, so-called bio-windows. The project will demonstrate the methodology in full scale on a landfill in Denmark, Fakse landfill, located in Southeastern Zealand.