Abstract
Wastewater treatment is crucial to ensure a sustainable supply of clean water, especially for human use. Natural flocculants can overcome the disadvantages of chemical flocculants in wastewater treatment. This study proposes a new natural-based flocculant from the Tacca leontopetaloides plant for leachate treatment. The plant tuber was processed through gelatinization to produce Tacca leontopetaloides biopolymer flocculant (TBPF). The characterization of TBPF for flocculant properties was investigated, and the performance of TBPF on leachate treatment using a standard jar test procedure was examined at different pH values of leachate and TBPF dosages. The characteristics of TBPF in terms of amylose/amylopectin fraction, viscosity, and zeta potential were 26:74, 0.037–0.04 Pa·s, and −13.14 mV, respectively. The presence of –COOH and –OH structure in TBPF indicates the flocculant properties. TBPF reduced the turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), and color from 218 NTU, 214 mg/L, 14201 PtCo to 45.8–54.5 NTU, 19.3–19.9 mg/L, and 852–994 PtCo, respectively, using 240 mg/L of TBPF at pH 3. These results show a high potential of the new plant-based TBPF for leachate treatment and water industry applications.
Highlights
Wastewater treatment requires large land areas, long process lines, as well as large ponds for treatment plants
The jar test analysis at pH 3 indicates that 240 mg/L of Tacca leontopetaloides biopolymer flocculant (TBPF)
Through TGA and zeta with size distribution analysis, it was found that flocs produced from the coagulation–flocculation of leachate exhibited certain characteristics similar to the flocculant used
Summary
Wastewater treatment requires large land areas, long process lines, as well as large ponds for treatment plants. The dosing of reagents (coagulants and flocculants) to promote aggregation can be advantageous for wastewater treatment. This method reduces settling times in a cost-effective manner and, thereby, can save space [1]. This method is applied to the primary wastewater treatment process to settle heavy metal and suspended solids. The removal of particulate solids in wastewater liquid effluent is crucial. When solids are micron and submicron in size, they remain as a suspension in liquid wastewater and cannot be removed by gravity settling [2]. The particles need to agglomerate by coagulation–flocculation, followed by filtration, centrifugation, and sedimentation
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