Performance of upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor using anaerobic granular sludge for bioconversion of leachate

Abstract

Leachate which is defined as the liquid that drained out from the landfill waste, can cause contamination to the environment and also the human health if it leaks and filter through the soil and into the groundwater. Therefore, a proper treatment is needed to overcome this problem in order to reduce the environmental issues. One of the alternatives is to treat the leachate using anaerobic granules in an Up-flow Ananerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor. Granules are groups of selfimmobilization microorganism. In this study, the anaerobic granules were used in treating the fresh leachate that was taken from the raw leachate pond in the Tanjung Langsat Sanitary Landfill. The laboratory scale of Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor was used and was filled with 500mL of anaerobic granules imported from Denmark, and the reactor is filled with 1 L of leachate. Before the granules were transferred into the reactor, acclimatization of the anaerobic granules in the raw leachate was being done for two months so that the biomass can be familiar with leachate. After that, the feed (leachate) was fed into the reactor daily with flow rate 22mL/min for 90 minutes. Throughout the experimental work, the removal efficiency for chemical oxygen demand (COD) were 87.96%. Apart from that, the removal for heavy metal such as nickel, cadmium, zinc, and lead were as high as 99.92%, 99.80%, 98.13% and 78.68% respectively. The acetic acid which was one of the volatile fatty acid (VFA) increased initially but decreased in the end of the experiments. This indicates that the bacteria used up the acetic acids for methonogenesis activity. Besides, the amount of bubbles produced shows that biogas produced due to the methonogenesis activity in the reactor.