NAMS 2002 Workshop - ICOM 2008

Drinking and Wastewater Applications IV – 3
Thursday July 17, 10:00 AM-10:30 AM, Honolulu/Kahuku
Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) for Landfill Leachate Treatment
and Removal of Hormones
A. Do, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA
A. Prieto, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA
D. Yeh (Speaker), University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA - dhyeh@eng.usf.edu
To date, the majority of the studies on trace pharmaceuticals and endocrine
disrupting compounds (EDCs) have focused on their fate in sewage treatment
plants. However, EDCs can enter the landfill via several routes, including
household solid waste and sludge from wastewater treatment plants.
Increasingly, in light of the ineffectiveness of conventional wastewater treatment
systems to completely remove these contaminants, the public is instructed to
dispose of PPCP in household trash in the US. In a recent survey conducted in
the UK, two-thirds of the subjects disposed of unwanted or expired mediation
through household trash. With the maturing of the Baby Boom Generation and
our society's increasing reliance on mediation, there is good reason to anticipate
that states with high populations of the elderly, such as Florida, will receive high
loadings of EDCs to landfills in years to come. Even if the EDCs are disposed in
bags or containers, it is likely that they will be released once they enter the
general trash stream, either through mechanical compaction and breakage in the
garbage trucks or at the landfill. Additionally, containers can lose integrity in the
landfill from degradation, thereby enabling the contents to enter the general
contents of the landfill. In short, landfills can serve as a long-term source of
EDCs for soil and groundwater contamination.
To prevent environmental contamination and to comply with state and local
regulations, an effective method is needed for treating and removing xenobiotic
compounds from landfill leachate. Landfill leachates are among the most difficult
waste streams to treat, as they typically contain high concentrations of dissolved
and colloidal organics (much of which may be recalcitrant and hard to degrade),
inorganics (e.g., ammonium), heavy metals (e.g., arsenic, mercury, cadmium,
copper, and xenobiotic organic pollutants (e.g., chlorinated organics). Further,
constituents of the effluent can be toxic or inhibitory to many conventional
biological treatment processes. Although there is a growing trend to operate
landfills themselves as biological reactors, young landfills will rely most heavily
on an external leachate treatment system while the biological activity establishes
within the landfill itself.
The membrane bioreactor (MBR), in which biological waste treatment and
membrane separation (typically MF or UF) are synergistically-coupled, is a