MEASUREMENT OF MOISTURE CONTENT OF WASTE MATERIALS WITH FREQUENCY DOMAIN REFLECTOMETRY(FDR)

Incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW) has resulted in large quantities of residues which can be recycled in roads and landfill covers provided the environmental concerns related to leaching of salts and metals can be mitigated. The pollutant transport from these residues depends on quantity and variability of moisture at re-use sites. For realistic assessment of leaching rates and pollutant transport risks quantifying the moisture variability is important.However due to destructive nature of traditional sampling regimes it is not possible to study moisture content of residues in the field. This study has tested a non invasive frequency domain based method at laboratory scale for its ability to measure moisture content in two different types of waste materials. The results show that despite high salt concentrations in waste samples this technique is robust and does not suffer from errors often encountered in time domain approaches