Humic substances isolation method development and its application to landfill leachates from elevated temperature landfills (ETLFs)

Landfill leachate is a mixture of the percolated rainwater and moisture from the solid wastes generated municipal solid waste landfills. Leachate needs to be managed properly to avoid contaminating soil, groundwater, or surface water bodies. Discharging to publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) is the most common practice for leachate disposal as it economically effective and practically convenient. However, bio-refractory organic materials like humic substances in leachates can penetrate biological treatment process and quench the UV light strongly, in turn interfere with the UV254 disinfection process. The characterization of humic substances in landfill leachates are important to understand the lower biodegradability and UV254 quenching properties of leachates. Organic content of the leachates from the elevated temperature landfills are above typical range. Therefore, treatment of leachates from elevated temperature landfills (ETLFs) are more difficult. A method has been developed in this study to isolate humic substances from landfill leachates and applied on the leachates from elevated temperature landfills (ETLFs). Leachates have been biologically treated and humic substances have also been isolated from the treated leachates to understand the biodegradability of the humic substances.