The Role of Wastewater Treatment Technologies in Municipal Landfill Leachate Treatment

Abstract

Municipal landfilling is the most common waste management practice to eliminate urban solid waste, but a critical problem coupled with landfills is the generation of toxic landfill leachates. These landfill leachates contain toxic heavy metals and recalcitrant compounds and must be treated before being released into the water bodies. This chapter recapitulates wide-ranging studies on various leachate treatment technologies such as physicochemical, biological (aerobic and anaerobic), and combination of physicochemical and biological processes. It is comprehended that individual physicochemical and biological leachate treatment process is incapable to attain strict discharge standards for direct release into the water bodies, whereas a combination of physicochemical and biological treatment process can accomplish acceptable treatment efficiencies of both ammoniacal nitrogen and chemical oxygen demand removal. In this regard, a decrease in the toxicity of treated leachates will aid in evaluating the efficiency of a leachate treatment technology. Currently, the practice of up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor (UASB) coupled with reverse osmosis (RO) membrane (UASB-RO) has shown to be a requisite means for accomplishing toxic-free treated leachate.