What are the benefits of Leachate Treatment?

Advantages of leachate recirculation or bioreactor landfill are increased decomposition rate, lower leachate treatment/disposal costs, and shortened post-closure maintenance period. Disadvantages include increased gas emissions and odors, physical instability of waste mass, and surface seeps. Landfill Leachate Treatment is a major engineering challenge due to the high and variable concentrations of dissolved solids, dissolved and colloidal organics, heavy metals and xenobiotic organics.Many different methods were in use to treat the landfill leachate. Most of these methods are adapted for wastewater treatment processing and have not yielded satisfactory results to treat leachate.Due to its varying characteristics and with high conductivity, leachate is hard to treat with biological treatment or chemical treatment.

Leachate generation is a major problem for municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills and causes significant threat to surface water and groundwater. Landfill Leachate can be defined as a liquid that percolates through a landfill and has extracted, dissolved and suspended matter from it. Leachate also results from precipitation entering the landfill from moisture that exists in the waste when it is composed. Landfills generally contain a highly inhomogeneous mixture of materials, which include both a very high organic component as well as soluble mineral substances. Some of the organic substances decompose naturally in the landfill body forming leachate. Landfill leachate may be characterized as a water-based solution of four groups of contaminants: dissolved organic matter (alcohols, acids, aldehydes, short chain sugars etc.), inorganic macro components (common cations and anions including sulfate, chloride, iron, aluminium, zinc and ammonia), heavy metals (Pb, Ni, Cu, Hg), and xenobiotic organic compounds such as halogenated organics.