Abstract
Landfill leachates are not adequately treated in traditional wastewater treatment plants, on account of their problematic peculiarities: i.e., dark colour, high concentration of recalcitrant pollutants and COD, and high toxicity. In this work, 19 biomasses (15 autochthonous and 4 allochthonous) were exploited in biosorption treatment for the remediation of a leachate (influent) and the effluent coming from the biological oxidation with activated sludge and nitrification–denitrification treatment. The effects of the initial pH, the biomass amount, and the medium for the biomass pre-culture were considered. The best configuration was: pH 5, 5 g L− 1 biomass cultivated on STY medium. Eventually, the two most effective biomasses, Cunninghamella bertholletiae MUT 2861 and Aspergillus fumigatus MUT 4050, were used in consecutive 2 h cycles in a batch biosorption experiment. The effectiveness of the treatment decreased in subsequent cycles in terms of decolourisation (31–15%). COD, Cl−, SO42−, total N, and toxicity were removed mainly in the second cycle of treatment (up to − 36, − 12, − 15, − 17 and − 49%, respectively). The results suggest that the effluent toxicity was basically due to uncoloured substances, which were mainly removed after coloured molecules.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by Italian Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (MIUR) through the FIRB 2013 funding scheme (project code: RBFR13V3CH_002). The authors would like to thank Uniproject Srl (Maltignano, Italy), which kindly provided the samples and supported the research, Acs Dobfar spa (Tribiano, Italy) and Wetlands Engineering (Louvain La Neuve, Belgium), which kindly provided the byproduct fungal biomasses.
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Tigini, V., Varese, G.C. Biosorption with autochthonous and allochthonous fungal biomasses for bioremediation and detoxification of landfill leachate. Environ Earth Sci 77, 342 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-018-7519-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-018-7519-y