Composition of wastes sent to landfill is rapidly changing due to changes in waste policies and life environment. thus it is expected that concentration ranges and fluctuations on the characteristics of leachate as a by-product of waste decomposition....
Composition of wastes sent to landfill is rapidly changing due to changes in waste policies and life environment. thus it is expected that concentration ranges and fluctuations on the characteristics of leachate as a by-product of waste decomposition. This study focuses on effective methods of leachate treatment as well as on characteristic changes of leachate caused by sources of wastes.
Generation and concentration range for both leachate and landfill gas composition were examined over 1,100 days using operation of a column reactor(30x120cm) filled with different types of wastes. Through this experiment, it is addressed that by-products of organic carbon decomposition can be converted into landfill gas, over 97%. This study also showed correlation of time function that enables mid-long term estimation of changes in organic pollutants in leachate.
Two plans for effective leachate treatment were conducted. First, organic by-products from industrial processes were substituted for methanol as a carbon source and its feasibility was assessed. Second, co-treatment of leachate with dehydrated water of food waste(DWF) was successfully carried out. Processes which are currently used in Sudockwon-Landfill were applied to evaluate the performance of two plans.
When carbon source was industrial by-products as a substitute for methanol under the load range of 0.13~0.39 ㎏COD/㎏VSS/day, 0.67~1.12 ㎏COD/㎥/day in denitrification process, there is a linear relationship between loading and removal of COD. It was shown that there is no inhibition on nitrification and removal. Organic compounds remained in the effluent of MLE, denitrification process, when the substitute replaced methanol by more than 50%. Coagulation process, however, was introduced to show better performance than the conventional process without methanol substitute.
This is because a high molecular substance above a 30kD mass contained in by-products from a industrial process is not easily uptaken by microorganism. But, behaviour analysis of humic substance distribution has proven that the high molecular substance played an important role to improve the coagulation efficiency.
It is extremely difficult to purify DWF, an average of its COD concentration is approximately 100 times higher than those of leachate generated from landfill, it is now subject to be treated in a facility due to execution of international agreement related to ocean dumping. In this study, merged treatment of the DWF with leachate took place in an additional anaerobic digestion tank at first, and then biological MLE followed by coagulation process in order to evaluate treatment efficiency. The anaerobic digestion tank was operated, using in the mixture ratio between the DWF & leachate, and HRT as control factor for raised inflow load of organic matters in phase. Under the circumstances, an average of over 92% removal efficiency for organic matters was sustained under 8.5 kg-SCOD/㎥/day and under 0.7 kg-SCOD/kg-VSS/day. 75% organic nitrogen in the DWF was converted into over 90% ammonium-nitrogen, thus water treatment condition for application of nitrogen removal process was created.
Furthermore, coagulation, the final treatment process, was evaluated to play a significant role to effectively remove phosphorus, normal hexane, etc. as well as remove organics and color as it's primarily activity in merging application condition for the DWF.
A dominant organism adopted and adjusted in each process was analyzed. Lactobacillus was dominant microorganism in the anaerobic digestion process where mixture of leachate and DWF were introduced and nitrifiers were dominant microorganism in MLE process: Paracoccus and Mesorhizobium sp. in processes with methanol and by-products, respectively.