The United Arab Emirates (UAE) relies on groundwater as well as desalinated water which are very expensive and energy-concentrated. Despite the lack of water resources, only 54% of wastewater was recycled in the UAE in 2016. In this study, a Sustainable Farming Compartment (SFC) with an evaporative cooling system is investigated as an alternative to reusing wastewater and the optimal design is identified experimentally and numerically. First, the applicability of the SFC was examined to reduce the ambient temperature in the system. A prototype SFC was tested in the environmentally constrained laboratory and field site considering an extreme climate condition (with high temperature and humidity) in Abu Dhabi to evaluate the temperature drop and humidity change of the SFC. The experimental results showed that the temperature of the SFC significantly decreases by 7–15 °C when the initial relative humidity is 50%. For validation, an energy modeling using dynamic numerical simulations was performed that shows statistically good agreement with the experimental results. Based on the parametric studies of the system components, the optimal cooling performance of the system in terms of locations of inlet and outlet, the variation of Reynolds number was evaluated. The study suggested an optimized design for the SFC with an evaporative cooling system.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills near a metropolitan area are renewable energy resources to produce heat and methane that can generate electricity. However, it is difficult to use those sources productively because disposed MSW in landfills are spatially and temporally heterogeneous. Regarding the prediction of the sources, the analysis of in situ MSW properties is an alternative way to reduce the uncertainty and to understand complex processes undergoing in the landfill effectively. A hydraulic profiling tool (HPT) and membrane interface probe (MIP) test measures the continuous profile of MSW properties with depth, including hydraulic pressure, temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), and the relative concentration of methane at the field. In this study, we conducted a series of the tests to investigate the MSW characteristics of active and closed landfills. MIP results showed that the methane existed closer to right below the top cover in the active landfill and several peak concentrations at different layers of the closed landfill. As the depth and age of the waste increased, the hydraulic pressure increased for both landfills. The average EC results showed that the electrical conductivity decreased with the landfill age. The results of hydraulic properties, temperature, and EC obtained from active and closed sites could be used to estimate the waste age and help designing energy recovery systems.