A new process for the combined treatment of municipal wastewaters and landfill leachates in coastal areas

One of the most convenient methods for leachate control is to treat landfill leachates with domestic wastewaters. In this framework, a two-stage treatment system including anaerobic pre-treatment combined with a chemical post-treatment system such as ammonia stripping and/or Magnesium Ammonium Phosphate (MAP) precipitation can be comparable with a conventional secondary biological treatment. In this study, 2.5% and 2% of leachate by volume was mixed with domestic wastewater as the feed for the mesophilic Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Bed Reactor (UASBR). pH, feed strength and hydraulic retention time (HRT) were monitored for the evaluation of the performance of the anaerobic process. The HRT's varied from 0.76 to 0.52 d and 58% and 85% COD removal efficiencies were obtained at Organic Loading Rates (OLR) of 0.63 and 2 kg COD/m3.d respectively. The average biomass (VS) concentration in the reactor increased from 40 g/l to 50 g/l during the study. Effluents from the UASBR were further treated chemically either with lime for ammonia stripping or with MAP precipitation. MAP precipitation was applied both at the stoichiometric ratio (Mg:NH4:PO4 = 1:1:1) and above the stoichiometric ratio (Mg:NH4:PO4 = 1:1:1.3). Maximum NH4 removal of 66% was achieved at the pH of 9.3 at the stoichiometric ratio, whereas 86% NH4 removal was obtained at the pH of 9.3 above the stoichiometric ratio. Alternatively, ammonia stripping was applied either to the effluents directly taken from the anaerobic reactor or to the effluents to which MAP precipitation was applied stoichiometrically. Ammonia stripping was conducted for 24 h and 89% NH4 removal was observed at the end of 24 h. Consequently, this study indicates that anaerobic pre-treatment combined with chemical post-treatment (MAP) produced high quality of effluent comparable to the conventional biological treatment especially in terms of N and P levels.