Jung Kwon Kim* and Saburo Matsui*

*Laboratory for Control of Environmental Micropollutants, Kyoto University

+ Correspondence should be addressed to Jung Kwon Kim:
(1-2 Yumihama, Otsu City, Shiga, 520 Japan)

Abstract

From the viewpoint of global warming control, we have studied control of methane gas from waste landfill. There is strong competition for substrates between sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) and methane producing bacteria (MPB) leading to the possibility of controlling methane gas production by MPB. SRB interference was enhanced with the activity of MPB at the different substrate use by adding sulfate as Na2SO4 in the artificial landfill columns. Over 500 days, since the start-up of the experiments, organic matters were decomposed and converted by MPB to high methane generation (max. conc. 60.2%) in the columns where sulfate was not added. However, in the columns which received sulfate, organic matters were decomposed and the methane production was controlled by SRB. Most of the CO2 produced was dissolved in the leachates in the form of inorganic carbon (IC) .

Key words: global warming, landfill, methane, sulfate reduction, sulfate reducing bacteria