Mature landfill leachate treatment using sonolytic-persulfate/hydrogen peroxide oxidation: Optimization of process parameters

The suitability of stand-alone ultrasound (US) system, coagulation pre-treatment followed by US, hydrogen peroxide added US system (US-H2O2) and persulfate added US system (US-PS) for the treatment of matured landfill leachate was investigated. With US system, around 67% COD removal and an increase in BOD/COD ratio were observed (from 0.033 to 0.142) after 15 min at 30% US amplitude. However, the energy input required for landfill leachate treatment in US system was found to be very high due to the presence of fixed solids. Coagulation pretreatment using alum was carried out to improve the overall COD removal and reduce the cost of treatment. As a result, the COD removal was increased to 78% (42% in pretreatment and 36% in US) in 15 min. On the other hand, US-H2O2 and US-PS hybrid systems have shown significant improvement in COD removals (93% and 86%, respectively) from raw leachate after 15 min. Subsequently, a three factor (i.e. PS dose (mg/L), H2O2 dose (mol/L), and US amplitude (%)) 5-level design of experiment was used to maximize the COD removal efficiency by response surface methodology (RSM). The RSM model generated a quadratic equation to accurately analyze the influence of input variables on COD removal efficiency (R-2 of 0.92). A maximum COD removal of 98.3% was predicted using the model and the corresponding optimal experimental condition were identified as follows: PS dose similar to 4700 mg/L, H2O2 dose similar to 0.7 mol/L and US amplitude similar to 49%. The overall observations reveals that PS and H2O2 coupled with US system has a great prospective to treat mature landfill leachate.