Constructed wetlands as a treatment method for landfill leachate

On-site treatment of landfill leachate may soon be recommended by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Various methods and concepts are currently used or have been proposed to this end. This paper describes a treatment system for landfill leachate using a constructed wetland as a tool for; water volume reduction, leachate recycling, bioremoval of organics and nutrients, precipitation and adsorption of metals, gas production enhancement, gaseous emissions minimisation and as pre-treatment before a polishing step using other methods, for example, reverse osmosis. Assuming precipitation values corresponding to Southern Sweden a wetland covering 25 % of the drained area will reduce the annual leachate flow by 30%. If 80 % is covered by wetland all precipitation will be lost as evapotranspiration. A test plant has been established at the Swedish waste company ASSY:s landfill in Hedeskoga, both a constructed wetland and the reverse osmosis pilot plant, to test the effectiveness of these methods

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