Combined treatment of landfill leachate by biological and membrane filtration technology

A treatment system using a combined biological engineering process has been developed to effectively treat municipal solid waste ( MSW) landfill leachate. The process combines an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB), a sequencing batch reactor (SBR), a continuous micron filtration (MF), and reverse osmosis (RO) technologies to treat leachate from the Guangzhou Xingfeng Municipal Solid Waste Sanitary Landfill, which accepts about 5,500-6,500 tons of municipal solid wastes and generated around 1,700 m(3) of leachate each day. The combined technology has achieved successful operational results with average removal efficiencies for CODCr, BOD5, and total nitrogen of 99.8, 99.8, and 99.5%, respectively. The effluent quality consistently meets the nonpotable water reuse standard.