Detailed treatment line for a specific landfill leachate remediation. Brief economic assessment

•A combined treatment line for a particular landfill leachate.•Physic-chemical pre-treatment/solar photo-Fenton (DOC 30%)/biotreatment.•Main operating cost comes from H2O2 (72% of total costs).•Total costs were estimated on 43 €/m3.

Landfill leachate is regarded as a great threat to environment and its remediation is very complicated task due to its recalcitrant nature. Consequently, strategies based on integrated physic-chemical–biological techniques must be evaluated. This work propounds a combined treatment line for a particular landfill leachate, consisting of a preliminary physic-chemical stage followed by an Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) by means of solar photo-Fenton and a final conventional biotreatment. Additionally, an economic evaluation of the proposed treatment line is presented. The results obtained for a landfill leachate sample containing a high organic load (landfill leachate of around 40 g/L as COD and 15 g/L as DOC) revealed that this technologies combination is effective reducing recalcitrant organic content after the conditioning step (17% DOC removal), requiring then a solar photo-Fenton (Fe 1 mM) treatment time of 11 h that generates a non-toxic and biodegradable effluent mineralization percentage needed to achieve an appropriate biodegradability was 27%, requiring a consumption of 22 g H2O2/L. Total costs have been assessed in around 40 €/m3.