LITERATURE REVIEW

Solid waste landfills may cause severe environmental impacts if leachate and gas emissions
are not controlled. Leachate generated in municipal landfill contains large amounts of organic
and inorganic contaminants. Leachate may also have a high concentration of metals and
contain some hazardous organic chemicals. The removal of organic material based on COD,
BOD and ammonium from leachate is the usual prerequisite before discharging the leachates
into natural waters. The leachate composition from the transfer station can vary depending on
several factors, including the degree of compaction, waste composition, climate and moisture
content in waste. As a general rule, leachate is characterized by high values of COD, pH,
ammonia nitrogen and heavy metals, as well as strong colour and bad odour. At the same
time, the characteristics of the leachate also vary with regard to its composition and volume,
and biodegradable matter present in the leachate against time. All these factors make leachate
treatment difficult and complicated. Many different methods are currently in use to treat the
landfill leachate. Most of these methods are adapted for wastewater treatment processing and
can be divided into two main categories: biological treatments and physical/chemical
treatments.

There are many methods of leachate treatment such as:

Aerobic Biological Treatment such as aerated lagoons and activated sludge

Anaerobic Biological Treatment such as anaerobic lagoons, reactors.
Physiochemical treatment such as air stripping, pH adjustment, chemical precipitation,
oxidation, and reduction.
Coagulation using lime, alum, ferric chloride, and land treatment.
Advanced techniques such as carbon adsorption, ion exchange.

The leachate composition from the transfer station can vary depending on several factors,
including the degree of compaction, waste composition, climate and moisture content in
waste. As a general rule, leachate is characterized by high values of COD, pH, ammonia
nitrogen and heavy metals, as well as strong colour and bad odour. At the same time, the
characteristics of the leachate also vary with regard to its composition and volume, and
biodegradable matter present in the leachate against time.

Landfill leachate has also been effectively treated by the rotating biological contactor (RBC)
process. The RBC is a biological process consisting of a large disk with radial and concentric
passages slowly rotating in a concrete tank. During the rotation, about 40 percent of the
media surface area is in the wastewater. The rotation and subsequent exposure to oxygen
allows organisms to multiply and form a thin layer of biomass. This large, active population
causes the biological degradation of organic pollutants. Excess biomass shears off at a steady
rate and is then carried through the RBC system for removal in a clarifier. Activated carbon
adsorption systems have also been used in the treatment of landfill leachates for the removal
of dissolved organics, however, they are generally considered as one of the more expensive
treatment options and often, must be combined with other treatment technologies to achieve
desired results. The most common biological treatment is activated sludge, which is a
suspended-growth process that uses aerobic microorganisms to biodegrade organic
contaminants in the leachate. With conventional activated sludge treatment, the leachate is
aerated in an open tank with diffusers or mechanical aerators. Since solid waste management
becomes an essential issue and the leachate is considered as very hazardous, this study is
done to apply innovative methods that are low tech, simple in application.

Materials :

a) Leachate
Leachate is collected from the solid waste landfill located in Kuala Selangor in Malaysia
and the leachate composition will be as given in Table 1 and Table 2.

Table 1: The chemical composition of leachate.

Parameter Measured characteristic

BOD5 3400 PPM
COD 8250 PPM
pH 8.24
Turbidity 1400 NTU
TS 29942 PPM
TDS 26612 PPM
Conductivity 59400
SO4 34712 PPM
Cl 6365 PPM
P2O5 1308 PPM
NO3 3.95 PPM
NH4 3745 PPM

Table 2: Physical properties.

 Perlite Bentonite

Element Percentage present % Element Percentage present %

SiO2 75 SiO2 53.62
Al2O3 18 Al2O3 14.47
Na2O 4.0 Fe2O3 8.53
K2O 5.0 CaO 1.63
CaO 2.0 MgO 3.96
Fe2O3 1.5 Na2O 3.73
MgO 0.5 K2O 0.96
TiO2 0.2 SO3 1.15
MnO2 0.1 TiO2 1.15
SO3 0.1 P2O5 0.15
FeO 0.1 L.O.I 10.46
Ba 0.1
PbO 0.5
Cr 0.1
Total 99.81

Municipal Solid Waste

The exponential generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) over the years has been
contributed mainly due to the expanding of industrial activities, population growth, and
lifestyle changes. In Malaysia alone, population has been increasing at a rate of 2.4 % every
year and the generation of MSW also increases dramatically. As a result, various types of
MSWs including industrial, commercial and agricultural by products are being disposed to
the landfill over the years. Therefore, it is undoubtedly that appropriate MSW management is
somewhat crucial nowadays. Most significantly, Malaysians are currently generating about
5,781,600 tonnes of solid waste annually based on 2012 census data. Put together the waste
generation of 0.9 kg/capita/day, it is expected that the amount of solid waste will be increased
to double digits as the country is moving forward to be a developed nation in 2020. This
estimation is by some means realistic because the process of urbanization has seen many rural
and isolated areas receive widespread economic development program which has changed
Malaysia landscape entirely due to the implementation of Government Transformation
Program (GTP) introduced by the present 6th Malaysias Prime Minister in 2009.

Consequently, responsible authorities particularly municipalities and landfill operators

nationwide are facing difficulty in dealing with staggering amount of MSW to dispose it in a
sustainable way. In addition, the selection for ideal and feasible method in controlling the
disposal of high quantities of MSW at economical costs that can avoid environmental
damages are difficult to be decided due to various deliberations need to be made (Umar et al.
2010). Conventionally, landfilling of solid waste has been the most preferred method for solid
waste disposal due to technical feasibility, ease of operation, minimum supervisions and low
operation expenditure. In most countries, landfilling is the most acceptable means for
eliminating MSW which favors to the technology exploitation and capital cost (Renou et al.
2008).While most of the landfills nowadays equipped with a level three sanitary systems,
many developing countries are still struggling to equip state of the art facilities at the landfill.
For example, there are 261 landfills in Malaysia whereby more than 80 % of them are being
controlled tipping or open dumping practice. This is due to the fact that it obscures lower cost
of operation and maintenance compared to the other established techniques (incineration and
advanced landfill system) (Halim et al. 2010a). Unfortunately, this practice has caused
excessive generation of leachate whereby if it is not treated and safely disposed, landfill
leachate could be a potential source of surface and ground water contamination, as it may
percolate through soils and subsoils, causing pollution to receiving waters (Aziz et al. 2011).

The technology of solid waste disposal has evolved from conventional to advanced
systems which emphasize more on the design, storage capacity and economical principle
in receiving various types of wastes including leachate treatment availability. These are
the main factors taken into consideration when planning a solid waste disposal site.
Above all, proper decisions during designing stage, operation and long-term post-closure
plan could ensure efficient monitoring of leachate generation which by far continues to
generate even after the landfills have been ceased its operation (Wiszniowski et al. 2006).
In general, a landfill will undergo chemical and physical changes caused from the
degradation process of solid waste refuse with the soil matrix once the landfilling is
complete. Generation of liquid percolates through solid waste matrix assists with
rainwater percolation, biochemical, chemical and physical reactions within solid waste
refuse directly influencing the quantity and quality of the leachate. In addition, leachate
quality and quantity also were influenced by the landfill age, precipitation, weather
variation, waste type and composition (Abbas et al. 2009). Principally, a functional
landfill site is always occupied with a leachate treatment facility to treat hazardous
pollutants in the leachate. Therefore, finding a sustainable method for leachate treatment
has always been a priority for landfill managers in order to safely discharge treated
leachate into the water bodies without endangering the environment. Over the last
decades, new and advanced sustainable technologies of leachate treatment have started
received growing interests which offer better removal of leachate pollutants. By utilizing
these new technologies, difficult parameters are much easier to treat nowadays. In the
early days, landfill leachate was mainly disposed by channeling the leachate pipes to the
sewer system and released into the sea. Alternatively, there was also separated system
where the leachate pipes were connected with domestic sewage network at conventional
sewage plant (Ahn et al. 2002) and treated simultaneously. However, as the volume of
leachate generation increase over time with wide variations in leachate pollutants, this
method reduced the treatment efficiency of sewage plant (een and Aktas 2004).
Concerning this, many additional treatments have been proposed and invented in treating
landfill leachate separately.

Virtually, various types of treatments have been explored including biological, physical,
chemical and physico-chemical techniques. As far as the authors concern, most of the
treatments in the market today have their own advantages and limitations. For example,
biological treatment is undoubtedly the most effective way in treating high concentration
of BOD5 (Renou et al. 2008). However, depending on the nature of leachate pollutants,
sludge bulking may occur in conventional aerobic system which disturbs the leachate
treatability (Dollerer and Wilderer 1996). Conventional physico-chemical techniques
such as chemical precipitation (Chen et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2009b; Di Iaconi et al.
2010), adsorption (Ching et al. 2011; Kamaruddin et al. 2011; Lim et al. 2009; Singh et
al. 2012), coagulation/flocculation (Liu et al. 2012; Al-Hamadani et al. 2011; Ghafari et
al. 2010), chemical oxidation (Sun et al. 2009; Anglada et al. 2011; Cortez et al. 2011a,
b) may be used as co-treatment along biological treatments. These techniques have been
proven suitable in dealing with difficult parameters in leachate including humic, fulvic
acid, heavy metals, adsorbable organically bound halogens (AOXs), polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) and several other of persistent organic pollutants (Abbas et al. 2009).
Very recently, numerous studies have been introduced which focuses on new and
advance treatment. In view of that, various factors have been considered in proposing an
ideal treatment system that results in high efficiency of parameters reduction as to
comply with the permissible discharge limit enforced by the authorities. Therefore, the
purpose of this article aims to summarize leachate sustainable treatment processes
including biological, physical and chemical techniques reported from 2008 to 2012. The
articles discussed in depth about existing and new treatment methods in treating high
concentration of leachate and its progress in the recent years.
Experimental work
Aerobic treatment process was applied using the mean of coagulation flocculation theory
by using coagulant and accelerators substances for accelerating and improving the
coagulation and flocculation process.