Removal of Iron from Semiaerobic Landfill Leachate by Activated Sludge-Activated Carbon Process

Biological treatment of leachate In Malaysia is not well established and some of the important data for the treatment process still lacking . The behavior of microbes is unknown for semi aerobic leachate treatment. This research was consucted to establish some of the important data the biological treatment of semi-aerobic leachate with and without the influence of powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) . For the present study, semi aerobic leachate was collected from pulau Burung Landfill site (PBLS) , Nibong Table, penang , Malaysia. The experiment involved operating two 16 L Continuous Flow laboratory – scale activated sludge reactors in parallel at room temperature and adjusted to pH=5 0.5. One of the reactors was supplemented with PAC of 75-150 m size to observe its effect on leachate . the study was conducted with three different Hydraulic Retention time (HRT) and four different Dilution Factors (DF) base on initial Iron (Fe) concentrations . the results indicated that 70% of Fe can be removed from the leachate at HRT 0.92 day DF=1 in the PAC reactor as compared to 30% removal without the presence of PAC . In addition, the result suggested that, the addition of PAC could have detrimental effect on treatment dfficiency because of the adsorption of accumulated toxin compounds during shock loading . the results showed enhanced reactor performance due to PAC addition in the Fe removal.

Keywords:

Semi-aerobic leachate , powderd activated carbon , activated sludge process , Iron