Mycoremediation of Old and Intermediate Landfill Leachates with an Ascomycete Fungal Isolate, Lambertella sp.

Giovanna Siracusa,Francesco Spennati,Ilaria Chicca,Qiuyan Yuan,Alessandra Bardi,Giulio Munz,Giulio Petroni,David Bernard Levin,Simone Becarelli,Simona Di Gregorio

doi:10.3390/w12030800

Giovanna Siracusa, Francesco Spennati + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030800

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Abstract

In the present study, an Ascomycete fungal strain, Lambertella sp., isolated from environmental polluted matrices, was tested for the capacity to reduce the contamination and the toxicity of intermediate and old landfill leachates. Batch tests in flasks, under co-metabolic conditions, were performed with two different old leachates, with suspended and immobilized Lambertella sp. biomass, resulting in a soluble chemical oxygen demand depletion of 70% and 45%, after 13 and 30 days, respectively. An intermediate landfill leachate was treated in lab-scale reactors operating in continuous conditions for three months, inoculated with immobilized Lambertella sp. biomass, in absence of co-substrates. The Lambertella sp. depleted the corresponding total organic carbon by 90.2%. The exploitability of the Lambertella sp. strain was evaluated also in terms of reduction of phyto-, cyto-, and mutagenicity of the different Landfill Leachates at the end of the myco-based treatment, resulting in an efficient depletion of leachate clastogenicity.

Highlights

Landfill Leachates (LFLs) are the aqueous effluents produced by landfills as a result of the leaching of the moisture and rainwaters from the contained wastes
The Biological OxygenDemand measured at day 5 (BOD5) of the leachate was lower than 0.27 mg O2 /L, indicating that the leachate can be classified as xan oldPEER
Our data are consistent with the results reported by [26] in which the more extensively described exploitation of a Basydiomicetes, the Dichomitus squalenes, was used to treat an old LFL

Summary

Introduction

Landfill Leachates (LFLs) are the aqueous effluents produced by landfills as a result of the leaching of the moisture and rainwaters from the contained wastes. The leaching process creates polluted aqueous matrices composed by different classes of organic and inorganic compounds, recalcitrant to biodegradation and toxic for the environment. These contaminants are often found at high concentrations and some of them are recalcitrant to biodegradation, comprising humic and fulvic acids and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and metals that autochthonous microorganisms in landfills are unable to transform or degrade [1,2,3,4,5,6]. That is why strategies adopted to reduce the organic and inorganic loads in LFLs are generally chemical-physical processes, which might be expensive and not always effective in removing all the toxic and recalcitrant compounds. Physical-chemical treatments such as classic Fenton or combined Fenton processes, evaporation, and/or Advanced

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