Anaerobic Digestion Process for the Treatment of Sisdole Landfill Leachate in Nepal

Abstract

Along with the population, organic waste has been rising significantly in recent years. The resulting uncontrollable waste loads and conventional methods of waste treatment have begun to cause chaos at the landfill sites. This study evaluates the performance of an anaerobic digestion process using batch reactors for the treatment of landfill leachate collected from the Sisdole landfill site in Nuwakot, Nepal. A lab-scale anaerobic batch reactor was set up in Kathmandu University, Nepal. Using an anaerobic digestion process, COD values of the leachate decreased from 2230 mg/l to 1125 mg/l (removal efficiency of ~50%), whereas total solids concentration decreased from 1925 to 925 mg/L under a retention time of 10 days. In addition, Monod’s model was established to design an Anaerobic Sequential Batch Reactor to achieve better performance, resulting in 85% removal efficiency for the leachate treatment. Overall, this study analyzed the anaerobic digestion process on the landfill leachate of Sisdole, and modeled the process to identify the conditions required for increasing the efficiency of treatment of Sisdole landfill leachate.