Combination of air stripping and biological processes for landfill leachate treatment

Landfill waste decomposition generates a dark effluent named, leachate which is characterized by high organic matter content. To minimizethese polluting effects, it becomes necessary to develop an effective landfill leachate treatment process. The objective of this study was to evaluatethe performance of an innovative approach based on air stripping, anaerobic digestion (AD) and aerobic activated sludge treatment. A reductionof 80% of ammonia and an increase of carbon to nitrogen ratio to 25 were obtained, which is a suitable ratio for AD. This latter AD was performedin fixed bed reactor with progressive loading rate that reached 2 and 3.2 g COD/L/d for the raw and diluted leachate (1:2), respectively. Theanaerobic treatment led to significant removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biogas production, especially for the diluted leachate. The COD removal was of 78% for the raw leachate and a biogas production of 4 L/d with 70% methane content. The use of the diluted leachateled to 81% of COD removal and 7 L/d biogas with 75% methane content. It allowed a removal of 77% COD and more than 97% of the organiccompounds present in the initial leachate sample. KCI Citation Count: 0