Treatment of leachate from municipal solid waste landfill

Leachate generation is a major problem for municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills and causes significant threat to surface water and groundwater. Leachate can be defined as a liquid that passes through alandfill and has extracted dissolved and suspended matter from it. Leachate results from precipitation entering the landfill from moisture that exists in the waste when it is composed. This paper presents the results of the analyses of leachate treatment from the solid waste landfill located in Borg El Arab landfill in Alexandria using an aerobic treatment process which was applied using the mean of coagulation flocculation theory by using coagulant and accelerator substances for accelerating and improving coagulation and flocculation performance.The main goal of this study is to utilize a natural low cost material “as an accelerator additive to enhance the chemical treatment process using Alum coagulant and the accelerator substances were Perlite and Bentonite. The performance of the chemical treatment was enhanced using the accelerator substances with 90 mg/l Alum as a constant dose. Perlite gave better performance than the Bentonite effluent. The removal ratio for conductivity, turbidity, BOD and COD for Perlite was 86.7%, 87.4%, 89.9% and 92.8% respectively, and for Bentonite was 83.5%, 85.0%, 86.5% and 85.0% respectively at the same concentration of 40 mg/l for each.