Michigan Municipal Landfill Leachate Treatment

Two-Step Reverse Osmosis (TSRO)

Client

Michigan Municipal Landfill

Year

2020

Impact & Benefits

Recovered approximately 75% of the leachate as clean water

Case Study: TSRO, Landfill, Municipal

A municipal landfill leachate based in Michigan produces 50,000 GPD of leachate from their landfill. The leachate is currently processed by conventional wastewater treatment, which doesn’t meet the standard to discharge in the water bodies. They wanted to treat their process water to make clean water to comply with the regulatory permit.

Company Issue / Challenge

The company is currently providing huge surcharge for releasing the leachate stream directly in a creek.

The cost for land application is high and runoff has few nutrients, so paying to truck this material to farm fields is not efficient.

Managing the storage and hauling of leachate is a constant challenge and requires coordination of various trucks throughout the year.

Concentrating the nutrients in the leachate for storage and later land application with manure would be most efficient.

What We Delivered

Site Assessment

Worked with the Municipal Landfill to understand its unique challenges and brainstorm how best we could assist.

Pilot Testing

We collected samples of raw leachate and used our TSRO system to create clean water that can be reused or discharged directly to waterbodies.

Impact & Benefits

Our filtration system is designed to recover more than 75% of the leachate as clean water for direct discharge.

Clean Water Reclamation

The reclaimed water can be directly discharged into bodies of water.

PARAMETER	Unit	Landfill Leachate	TSRO Permeate	TSRO Concentrate	Percent Removal by TSRO
Total Solids	mg/L	17,300	2100	52,900	88%
Ammoniacal Nitrogen	mg/L	1,100	86.8	1,320	92%
Organic Nitrogen	mg/L	110	6.9	230	94%
Total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN)	mg/L	1,210	93.7	1,550	92%
Phosphorus	mg/L	11	n.d.	12	100%
Potassium	mg/L	557	19	828	97%
Sulfur	mg/L	47	n.d.	294	100%
Calcium	mg/L	148	n.d.	391	100%
Magnesium	mg/L	150	n.d.	359	100%
Sodium	mg/L	5,660	793	16,100	86%
Iron	mg/L	41.9	n.d.	50.9	100%
Manganese	mg/L	0.405	n.d.	0.676	100%
Zinc	mg/L	1.19	n.d.	1.38	100%
Copper	mg/L	0.02	n.d.	0.29	100%
Conductivity	mS/cm	31.8	5.57	71.6	na
pH	S.U.	7.57	6.61	8.2	na

These data reveal that majority of total solids (88%); total nitrogen (92%) and metals were removed by the TSRO. Phosphorus concentration was below detection limit indicating that the TSRO produced very clean water. Note that the high concentration of sodium in the TSRO concentrate is an artifact of batch concentration that leads to elevated total solids concentration. It would not be expected in the commercial, continuous system.