INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON WETLANDS AND SUSTAINABILITY 2007

TREATMENT OF LANDFILL LEACHATE USING SUBSURFACE FLOW

CONSTRUCTED WETLAND ENHANCED WITH MAGNETIC FIELD

Johan Sohaili, PhD, Shamila Azman and Nazaitulshila Rasit

Department of Environmental Engineering,
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
j_sohaili@yahoo.co.uk,
shamila_azman@hotmail.com

Abstract

Constructed wetland has an excellent potential as a low cost treatment system for
landfill leachate. Additional enhancement to the treatment system would certainly be
a benefit and increased its pollutant removal capacity. This study is focused on
studying the performance of vertical and horizontal subsurface flow constructed
wetland (SSF) on treating landfill leachate enhanced with magnetic field. The
wetland system was vegetated with Limnocharis flava and monitoring was conducted
on the plant heavy metals uptake, nutrient and total suspended solid removal.
Experiments were conducted with two systems, vertical SSF and horizontal SSF
within the duration of 18 days each. Both systems consist of control, vegetated and
vegetated with magnet tanks. The result obtained shows that the emergent plant
Limnocharis flava is capable of removing NH4_N>80%, NO3_N>70%, Fe>96 and
Mn>83% compared to the controlled tank. However it has lower removal efficiency in
removing TSS which is less than 48%. The constructed wetland system enhanced
with magnetic field has a greater removal ability compared to vegetated treatment in
removal of TSS and heavy metals. The highest removal was recorded in both
systems which was >86% for TSS, >88% for Mn and complete removal for Fe. The
effect of different flow format used in this study shows that vertical flow format
provides a proficient condition for nitrification but does not work with denitrification.
However, the horizontal flow format cannot provide nitrification due to limited oxygen
transfer capacity. The vertical SSF system shows greater removal in ammoniacal
nitrogen (>87%) and Mn (>78%) while horizontal flow had showed greater removal of
nitrate (>66%). Analysis on other chemical parameters did not show significant
 INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON WETLANDS AND SUSTAINABILITY 2007

difference between vertical and horizontal SSF constructed wetlands. Heavy metal
uptake by Limnocharis flava reveals that the plant’s leaves and roots are capable of
absorbing Fe and Mn in leachate.

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