Treatment of landfill leachate using UASB-MBR-SHARON–Anammox configuration

Abstract

Leachate treatment is a challenging issue due to its high pollutant loads. There are several studies on feasible treatment methods of leachate. In the scope of this study, high organic content of young leachate was eliminated using an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) and a membrane bioreactor (MBR) in sequence and effluent of the system was given to single reactor for high activity ammonia removal over nitrite (SHARON) and anaerobic ammonia oxidation (Anammox) reactors to remove nitrogen content. All reactors were set up at lab scale in order to evaluate the usage of these processes in sequencing order for leachate treatment. COD and TKN removal efficiencies were over 90 % in the combined processes which were operated during the study. The biodegradable portion of organic matter was removed with an efficiency of 99 %. BOD5 concentration decreased to 50 mg/L by UASB and MBR in sequence even the influent BOD5 concentration was over 8,000 mg/L. Although high nitrogen concentrations were observed in raw leachate, successful removal of nitrogen was accomplished by consecutive operations of SHARON and Anammox reactors. The results of this study demonstrated that with an efficient pretreatment of leachate, the combination of SHARON-Anammox processes is an effective method for the treatment of high nitrogen content in leachate.

Anammox-zeolite system acting as buffer to achieve stable effluent nitrogen values

“…Partial nitritation plays a key role in the successful application of Anammox process because it is usually the rate limiting step and it is difficult to obtain a stable nitrite effluent during long periods of time (Cho et al 2011) especially in wastewaters containing organic matter like leachate (Akgul et al 2013). Variable influent nitrogen and organic matter loads and different environmental conditions may play an important role in observing such difficulties especially in full-scale applications (van Kempen et al 2001;).…”

“…Variable influent nitrogen and organic matter loads and different environmental conditions may play an important role in observing such difficulties especially in full-scale applications (van Kempen et al 2001;). Failure to produce right stoichiometry for Anammox reaction in partial nitritation step may cause flaw with respect to nitrogen removal goals (Akgul et al 2013). The stoichiometric equation for Anammox is firstly described by Strous et al (1998) …”

Short-Term and Long-Term Inhibitory Effects of Copper on Anammox Process

“…Anammox process is applicable for especially ammonium-rich wastewaters such as landfill leachates [13,14], anaerobic digester rejects water [15,16], wastewater from semiconductor factories [17] and sludge liquors [18]. However, this process has been restricted by environmental and operational conditions due to vulnerable structure and slow growth rate of Anammox microorganisms [4,19].…”

Comprehensive study for Anammox process via multistage anaerobic baffled reactors

“…Many studies have been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of Anammox process in various configurations, and these studies have achieved distinct reactor performances such as up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) [10,11], sequencing batch reactor (SBR) [12,13], membrane bioreactor [14,15] and anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) [16,17]. However, the ABR reactor is known as a highly efficient anaerobic reactor configuration compared with other anaerobic systems.…”