Study of landfill leachate coagulation using hybrid coagulant of copperas/lime

Population growth and rapid industrial expansion has contributed to substantial amount of waste generation that subsequently lead to increased demand for landfill sites. Leachate is a harmful sub-stance that leaks from the landfill site consisting of vast amounts of organic and inorganic pollutants, and collected at the bottom of the site. Thus, we explored the potential of optimizing ferrous sulfate heptahydrate or copperas and lime in the coagulation treatment of leachate. Different formulations of copperas to lime (80:20 and 60:40) were employed for leachate treatment. This study evaluated the effect of initial pH 3-8, coagulant dosage 1,000-6,000 mg/L and coagulation time 15-75 min on leachate treatment. Finding showed that the hybrid coagulant of 60C:40L successfully achieved optimum removal of turbidity, color and suspended solids of about 89%, 91% and 96%, respectively, at pH 5, coagulant dosage of 5,000 mg/L, coagulation time of 30 min, and sedimentation time of 60 min. It was also found that the Freundlich isotherm model was the best to describe the adsorption mechanism for the studied coagulant. The findings of this research are vital for the development of sustainable and cost-effective leachate treatment in the future.