Study the effect of ultrasonic membrane anaerobic system (umas) in treating landfill leachate and methane gas production

Direct discharge of landfill leachate leads to severe environmental pollution due to its high chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solid (TSS) and Volatile Suspended Solid (VSS). Therefore, leachate needs proper treatment before discharging it into the river in order to reduce environmental pollution. This paper presents the study to evaluate efficiency of ultrasonic membrane anaerobic system (UMAS) in treating landfill leachate. This study is also an attempt to apply waste to energy concept by capturing methane gas from biodegradation of landfill leachate. Landfill leachate was treated using membrane anaerobic system (MAS) for seven days and UMAS for another seven days to compare the effect of membrane treatment and ultrasound added membrane treatment in treating landfill leachate and generating methane gas. The performances of both systems were analyzed based on COD, BOD, TSS and VSS removal efficiency as well as methane production. Throughout the experiment, COD removal was 92.6% for UMAS while 82% in MAS. BOD removal efficiency was higher in UMAS which was 83.2% compared to MAS which is only 71.5%. UMAS achieved TSS removal of 95.6% which is higher than MAS which only able to remove 80% of TSS. VSS removal in UMAS was 95% while MAS only achieved 74% of VSS removal efficiency. Methane gas production was 80.7% in UMAS and 71.3% in MAS. UMAS has also reduced membrane fouling and recovered permeate volume. The results obtained clearly show that UMAS is an effective system in treating landfill leachate and producing methane gas by reducing membrane fouling. Thus, this study will be useful in providing an effective way to treat leachate as well as affording an alternative renewable energy source in order to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels