Landfill Leachate Treatment

Landfill Leachate

Water treatment solutions

Saltworks can help you to address your leachate challenges with ultra-high recovery solutions for sewer or surface discharge. We have you covered for chemical, membrane and thermal solutions, including integration when required. Our solutions can reduce your leachate treatment costs, stakeholder risks, and residual waste volumes.

Landfill Leachate Treatment

Landfill leachate is produced by residual water and precipitation passing through degrading waste deposits. It presents unique challenges for water treatment. Depending on the age and type of landfill, leachate contains a mixture of organic and inorganic substances such as sulfates, nitrates, chlorides, ammonia, heavy metals, PFAS and other substances.

 

Flow rates and treatment goals can vary widely and impact treatment decisions. For example, a larger flow plant may benefit from multiple unit operations to optimize costs, while smaller flows could be treated with a single solution. Every case is different. We bring our leachate treatment experience to your benefit, helping you understand your options and costs.

Photo of an evaporation pond as used in the management and processing of landfill leachate
3D render of a SaltMaker MultiEffect evaporator built for minimal and zero liquid discharge applications

Leachate Treatment Options

Biological processes such as MBBR/MBR are widely used to remove organics and ammonia from landfill leachate. Ultrafiltration can remove total suspended solids. Neither remove salts that make up total dissolved solids (TDS)—our specialty. Options for TDS removal include:

  • XtremeRO for reverse osmosis capable of concentrating brines to 130,000 mg/L to minimize your waste stream
  • FlexEDR to remove chlorides via monovalent electrodialysis reversal
  • SaltMaker evaporator crystallizer family to further concentrate and solidify brines, without air emissions to atmosphere

Our solutions are compact, modular, and pre-packaged to minimize site installation costs. We partner with the best for biological treatment—if required—and your local contractors for integration. We can help you understand your options, costs, risks, and how to meet regulatory requirements including options for zero liquid discharge.

PFAS

PFAS (perfluoroalkyls and polyfluoroalkyls) chemicals are widely used in consumer and industrial products and have become a serious issue in landfill leachate. These “forever chemicals” do not naturally degrade and are receiving increasing attention.

 

New advances in desalination technologies can help reduce PFAS treatment and disposal costs: ultra-high pressure reverse osmosis systems (UHP RO) such as XtremeRO, minimal liquid discharge (MLD) and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) solutions such as our SaltMaker family. Saltworks can help with PFAS problems, integrating solutions into existing or new wastewater processes.

Diagram showing the chemical structures of PFOS and PFOA molecules
PFAS molecules including perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)

Case Study: SaltMaker MultiEffect Evaporator Crystallizer Treatment of Landfill Leachate

Our SaltMaker MultiEffect evaporator crystallizer has been proven on multiple raw landfill leachates and leachate RO brines. You can read about its success in our case study. Our SaltMaker solution reduced landfill leachate volume, generating highly concentrated brine or solids for return to landfill. Brine concentrations in excess of 30% solids-by-mass (outside reverse osmosis range) were increased to over 60%. Our SaltMaker customers benefit from: 

  • Automation, with intelligent self start/stop/cleaning
  • Maintainability, with built‐in automated cleaning cycles, no pressure vessels, no confined spaces, readily removable modules.
  • No pre-treatment requirements, and more.

Contact us for more information.

Slide thumbnail of a case study of a SaltMaker MultiEffect evaporator crystallizer used in the treatment of landfill leachate

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