Ammonium Removal from Balıkesir Providence Solid Waste Landfill Leachate via Jet Loop Reactor

Abstract

Solid wastes in landfill where the rain, surface waters and underground waters in contact dissolve to water phase and form leachate. An other source of leachate is solid waste’s (organic fraction) internal water. This wastewater, which contains high organic content (COD = 3000 – 7000 mg/L), is dark in color, has a heavy odor, contains high concentrations of heavy metal, is complex and extremely difficult to treat via conventional systems.

Conventional treatment systems are failed to treat leachate alone. Because of high concentrations of nitrogen compounds (NH3= 1000 – 1460 mg/L), it is difficult to treat with biological treatment systems. For this reason ammonia must be removed before biological treatment.

In this study, ammonium removal performance by gas stripping via jet loop reactor, which has simple installation and operation, low investment and operating costs, low energy requirement than classical systems, precisely controlled circulation rate, can provide a very good gas dispersion, homogeneous concentration and temperature profile,  has a high performance at mixing and mass transfer, is investigated. Initially Balıkesir providence Solid Waste Landfill leachate was characterized. The effect of temperature, pH, air rate and circulation rate on ammonia stripping performance at jet loop reactor was tested. Leachate (contains NH3= 1000-1460 mg/L) was fed to the reactor as it is without dilution. The system has 82 % ammonia removal efficiency at pH=11, 45 ^oC, 3700 L/h circulation rate, 1000 L/h air rate and 7 hours of operation time. Also at the same operation conditions 97 % ammonia removal efficiency at 12 hours of operation time was observed.