Abstract
The improper treatment of landfill leachates is one of the major problems associated with waste landfilling and causes serious environmental pollution at waste landfill sites and their surroundings. To develop a suitable landfill leachate treatment system and to minimize the risk of environmental pollution, it is important to characterize seasonal and temporal variations of landfill leachates. This study investigated the leachate quality of the Nam Son waste landfill in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2017–2019 and characterized the potential risks of landfill leachate using a leachate pollution index (LPI). The results of this study showed that the seasonal and temporal variation of the overall LPI during the monitoring period was small and in the range of 20–25 (values 2.5 times higher than the maximum permissible limits of Vietnam National Technical Regulation on Industrial Wastewater). The LPI sub-indices attributed to organic and inorganic pollutants were major components of the LPI. Especially, the annually averaged values of LPI of inorganic pollutants were 7.7 times higher than the maximum permissible limits, suggesting that the treatment of inorganic pollutants, such as ammonium-nitrogen (NH4+–N) and total nitrogen (TN), is highly required at Nam Son landfill to prevent environmental pollution surrounding the landfill site.
Highlights
An engineered municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill is designed to carefully isolate the dumped waste from the surrounding environment to prevent water, soil, and air pollution.The isolation is accomplished commonly with a combination facility including a bottom liner, gas ventilation, drainage system, and daily soil cover as well as a facility for treatment of landfill leachate [1]
It has been reported that landfill leachate contains various types of organic compounds, such as and non-biodegradable carbons, humic, and fulvic acids; inorganic compounds such as colloids; heavy metals; non-organic salts such as sodium, calcium, sulfate, and ammonia; other toxic and hazardous substances due to the lack of separation of dumped MSW [2,3,4,5]
The composition and potential pollutants of landfill leachate and the volume of leachate generated depend on many factors including waste composition, degree of compaction, age of dumped waste, seasonal variations in precipitation, landfill temperature, chemical and biological activities in a waste body, hydrogeological conditions in the vicinity of the landfill site, and management practices of MSW landfills [6,7,8]
Summary
An engineered municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill is designed to carefully isolate the dumped waste from the surrounding environment to prevent water, soil, and air pollution. The isolation is accomplished commonly with a combination facility including a bottom liner, gas ventilation, drainage system, and daily soil cover as well as a facility for treatment of landfill leachate [1]. In order to characterize the contamination potential of landfill leachate, an easycomparison index could be a useful tool. Kumar and Alappat [9,10] proposed a technique to quantify the leachate contamination potential of different landfills on a comparative scale in terms of a leachate pollution index (LPI). An LPI is a quantitative tool that measures the leachate pollution potential and can be used for characterizing MSW landfills and for planning and designing remedial measures to prevent environmental pollution
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