This article describes the application of software tools to investigate the degradation /biodegradation of the commodity polymer polypropylene (PP) in the sanitary filling of Sao Giacomo in Caxias Do Sul, RS. A description is given of the sanitary filling, in addition to the physicochemical variables that are relevant for the process. The data are organized in matrices and a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) algorithm is applied to interpret the variables correlated with the degradation and biological activity. For analyzing the data, use was made of the tools Matlab and InfoStat, with the purpose of establishing the physicochemical parameters involved in the degradation/biodegradation, and for determining the correlated components in order to predict the behavior of the parameters and the polymer degradation in the sanitary filling. The PCA analysis allowed one to describe the structure and interrelations of the original variables for the biodegradation of organic matter. The important parameters were found to be DQO and DBO which measure biodegradability and ammoniac nitrogen, an indicative of biological activity.
Landfill; multivariate; degradation; principal components; polypropylene
