Startup of Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor for Leachate Treatment

The tremendous increase in population in the last few decades has resulted in massive unmanageable solid waste products across the country. The leachate produced during decomposition of solid waste can be treated using conventional systems but proves to be uneconomical and requires a long duration thus leading to environmental unsustainability. However, recent advancements in wastewater treatment have emerged with moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) and is gaining popularity around the globe. The system is economical as it requires less land area while treating high quantum of wastewater in short time duration. The present study has been carried out with an objective to treat the landfill leachate using laboratory-scale aerobic MBBR system. The microorganisms were acclimatized for leachate degradation by feeding the reactor with varying composition of glucose and leachate with a COD inlet concentration of 1000 mg/L at HRT of 21 h. In Phase-I of the study, the reactor was operated with 100% glucose and resulted in 95 % COD removal with 90% TSS removal. In Phase-II of the reactor operation with inlet feed containing 75% glucose and 25% leachate resulted in 93% COD removal with 89% TSS removal. In Phase-III of the study duration, the reactor when fedwith 50% glucose and 50% leachate resulted in 91% of COD removal and 91% of TSS removal. However, on the 100th day of the study, the reactor was switched to 100% leachate and under pseudo steady state a COD removal of 84% and with TSS removal of 92% was being assessed. The kinetic parameters including sludge growth rate, decay coefficient and sludge yield were assessed in each step of the study. The results from the present study indicate that MBBR is an efficient technology that can remove 84 %of CODand92% TSS from leachate efficiently and effectively with a sustainable method.