Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Biochemical Engineering Journal

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bej

Regular article

Pilot-scale landll with leachate recirculation for enhanced

stabilization
Wenhai Huang a,b,1 , Zhenyu Wang a,1 , Qiming Guo a , Haizhen Wang a , Yan Zhou a,b, ,
Wun Jern Ng a,b,
a
b

Advanced Environmental Biotechnology Center, Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 28 July 2015
Received in revised form 1 October 2015
Accepted 17 October 2015
Available online 27 October 2015
Keywords:
Anaerobic Processes
Biodegradation
Biogas
Bioreactors
Leachate recirculation
Landll stabilization

a b s t r a c t
A pilot-scale landll and a two-phase (acidogenesis and methanogenesis) anaerobic sequencing batch
reactor (anSBR) system was setup to treat leachate collected from the simulated landll cell which had
leachate recirculation (at <0.3% of total waste volume/day). It was noted there was already substantial
acidogenic activity in the landll cell before the acidogenic reactor. Development of the microbial communities in the two reactors was inuenced by the acidogenesis in the landll cell. A COD half-life of
10 weeks was achieved in the pilot-scale landll system indicating very fast organics stabilization in the
landll. It was shown that with an ex-situ anSBR augmenting treatment of the landll leachate, rapid
landll stabilization could be achieved even when leachate recirculation was at a relatively low rate.
2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Sanitary landlling is by far the most economic and common
way for managing municipal solid wastes (MSWs) disposal around
the globe. For big countries, such as China, US and Australia, sanitary
landlling makes up 5090% of MSW disposal [13]; for smaller
countries, like Japan and Singapore, landlling contributes to only
25% of MSW disposal [4,5], due to land scarcity. After completion,
landll sites may be developed into parks, golf courses and even
real estate [6], but such development typically cannot be done soon
after landll closure, because of the long duration necessary for
landll stabilization [7].
Leachate recirculation is a most widely used procedure to
enhance landll stabilization [3,812]. Leachate recirculation can
help improve the attributes of a landll in the following ways:
increased moisture content, improved leachate quality, increased
methane production, increased waste subsidence and lowered
heavy metals concentration. To enhance landll leachate quality
and accelerate landll stabilization, studies on leachate recir-

Corresponding authors at: Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute

(NEWRI), CleanTech Loop (CleanTech One) #06-08, Nanyang Technological University, 637141, Singapore.
E-mail addresses: zhouyan@ntu.edu.sg (Y. Zhou), WJNG@ntu.edu.sg (W.J. Ng).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bej.2015.10.013
1369-703X/ 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

culation have often involved high recirculation rates (>10% of

total waste volume/day) [8,1315]. However, the large volume of
leachate moved can impose difculties such as increased risk of
leakage and high costs of operation.
Another strategy to accelerate landll stabilization is by biological treatment [13,16], among which anaerobic treatment is
increasingly favored because of its low energy requirement. The
advantages of anaerobic treatment (ex-situ) are: faster removal
of organic acids from the landll cell; higher buffer capacity for
treated landll leachate; and improved microbial community balance in both the landll and anaerobic reactors. OKeefe and
Chynoweth [17] found that with leachate recirculation, anaerobic treatment of leachate could greatly improve the management
of landll in terms of methane production and volatile solids
reduction. Two-phase anaerobic treatment, since rst proposed by
Pohland and Ghosh in 1971 [18], has aroused extensive researches
and application of such technology. The idea was to physically separate the two main groups of microorganisms (i.e., acidogens and
methanogens) into serial phases (reactors) so as to maximize the
growth rate of each. This technology has been shown to be effective
in establishing optimal microbial communities in the respective
phases, improving process stability, increasing methane production and speeding up substrate turnover rate [19,20]. However, its
feasibility in treating landll leachate was seldom investigated [21],

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W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

Leachate recirculation

Biogas M
Biogas A

Gas flowmeter A

Gas flowmeter M

Effluent M
Effluent A
Influent M

Influent A

MSWs

Desludge
Desludge
Acidogenic Reactor (RA)

Holding Tank

Methanogenic Reactor (RM)

FRP Tank

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of pilot-scale plant set-up.

Table 1
The composition of waste inside the landll tanks.
Waste type

Weight (ton)

Ratio (%)

Gravel
Paper
Horticulture
Food waste
Plastics
Sludge
Total

1.38
1.93
0.38
1.72
2
0.44
7.85

17.6
24.6
4.9
21.8
25.5
5.6
100

especially at scales larger than laboratory-size and over longer time

spans.
In the present study, a Fiber glass Reinforced Plastic (FRP)
tank containing MSW was fabricated to simulate a landll cell. A
pilot-scale two-phase anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (anSBR)
system was setup to treat the leachate collected from the FRP
tank with low leachate recirculation rate (<0.3% of total waste
volume/day). The objectives of the study were to: (1) evaluate
the effectiveness of low-rate leachate recirculation and two-phase
anaerobic treatment in enhancing landll stabilization; and (2)
investigate the development of microbial communities within the
two-phase anSBR system.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Feedstock
The MSW used in the simulated landll was congured to simulate the composition of MSW in Singapore [4]. Detailed composition
of the MSW is as listed in Table 1. The simulated MSWs had 68%
(w/w) of the material such as paper, cardboard, plastic, and gravel
collected from residential areas, 22% comprising food waste from
a local food court, 4.9% of horticultural waste collected from a university campus and the remaining 5.6% would be dewatered sludge
collected from Ulu Pandan water reclamation plant, respectively.
2.2. Pilot plant design and operation
The schematic diagram of the pilot plant is shown in Fig. 1. A
FRP tank with a diameter of 2 m and height of 4 m was constructed

to simulate landll cell. The FRP tank was placed on a concrete

platform and sheltered from rain and direct sunshine. Three vessels comprised the two-phase anaerobic system, and these were
placed in a small container. The two reactors [i.e., acidogenic reactor
(RA ) and methanogenic reactor (RM )] were constructed using stainless steel while the holding tank was constructed using FRP. The
working volumes of RA and RM were 100 L and 200 L, respectively,
and that of the holding tank was 100 L. The reactors were jacketed
with heating tapes and the temperature controlled at 40 1 C. The
pH control, feeding, mixing, desludging, settling and decanting of
the two-phase anSBR system together with the simulated landll
were implemented using a programmable logic controller (PLC).
pH was controlled by the PLC system with 1 mol/L sodium hydroxide solution and 1 mol/L hydrochloric acid solution. Cycle time was
12 h with feeding (while mixing, 10 min), mixing (10 h 3540 min
depending on desludging time), desludging (while mixing, 05 min
depending on SS in the reactors and efuent SS), settling (1 h) and
decanting (10 min). The control panels used Schneider automation
and controller units.
The bottom of the simulated landll cell was rst paved with
gravel to ensure better collection and subsequent circulation of
the leachate. The seed sludge for RA and RM was obtained from an
anaerobic digester at a water reclamation plant in Singapore. After
collection, the seed sludge was ltered through a 600 m sieve. RA
was removed from the system in Week 18 to investigate the performance of RM on its own. Detailed operating parameters are shown
in Table 2.

2.3. Analytical methods

Inuent and efuent samples were collected from feed tanks
and reactors routinely for chemical analysis. Volatile fatty acids
(VFAs, C2 C8 ) were measured using gas chromatography (Agilent Technologies 7890A GC system, US) with a Zebron ZB-FFAP
30 m 320 m 0.5 m column and a ame ionization detector
(FID). Prior to analysis, 0.1 mL of 10% formic acid was added to
each 0.9 mL of samples and standards for sample acidication. COD,
MLSS, and MLVSS were determined in accordance with Standard
Methods [22]. MLSS and MLVSS inside the reactors and in the discharge were tracked in order to monitor the SRT.

W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

439

Table 2
Two-phase anSBR operating parameters.
Parameters
Working volume (L)
Total volume (L)
Feed
Feed volume (L/cycle)
Cycles
HRT (d)
pH

Temperature (C)
Recirculation
rate

RA
RM
100
200
120
240
Leachate
Efuent from RA
5, 10 (from Week 4)
5, 10 (from Week 4)
2
2
10, 5 (from Week 4)
20, 10 (from Week 4)
5.3 0.2
7.4 0.1
40 1
40 1
10 L/day, 20 L/day (from Week 4), 40 L/day (from Week 18);
i.e., 0.07%/day, 0.13%/day, 0.27%/day of total waste volume

Table 3
Primer and probe sets for qPCR [23,24].

Remarks
RM started 2 weeks after RA
Leachate for RM from Week 18 (RA removed)
20 for RM from Week 18
5 for RM from Week 18

to construct the standard curve for the corresponding primer and

probe set.

Name

Function

Target group

Sequence (5 > 3 )

ARC787F
ARC915F
ARC1059R

F primer
TaqMan
R primer

Archaea

ATTAG ATACC CSBGT AGTCC

AGGAA TTGGC GGGGG AGCAC
GCCAT GCACC WCCTC T

BAC338F
BAC516F
BAC805R

F primer
TaqMan
R primer

Bacteria

ACTCC TACGG GAGGC AG

TGCCA GCAGC CGCGG TAATA C
GACTA CCAGG GTATC TAATC C

The volume of biogas produced by RA and RM was tracked with

gas mass ow controllers (0.50200 mL/min, Cole-Parmer, USA).
Biogas was collected using a 10 L gas bag (TEDLAR, US). Methane,
carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the biogas was analyzed using gas
chromatography (Agilent Technologies 7890A GC system, US) with
(1) an Agilent HayeSep R 0.9 m 1/8 2.0 mm packed column,
(2) an Agilent HayeSep C 3.0 m 1/8 2.0 mm packed column, (3)
an Agilent MolSieve 5A 3.0 m 1/8 2.0 mm packed column, (4)
an Agilent HayeSep Q 0.9 m 1/8 2.0 mm packed column, and
(5) an Agilent MolSieve 13 3.0 m 1/8 2.0 mm packed column
with two thermal conductivity detectors (TCD, a front detector for
measuring methane and carbon dioxide, and a back detector for
measuring hydrogen). Helium was the reference gas for Column
13 for detection of methane and carbon dioxide and argon was
the reference gas for Column 45 for detection of hydrogen.
2.4. DNA extraction and 16S ribosomal RNA gene quantitative
PCR (qPCR)
1.0 mL sludge samples were collected in 2 mL plastic tubes, centrifuged at 10,000 rpm for 60 s, followed by decantation of the
supernatant. The sludge was then washed twice with 1 mL phosphate buffer solution (PBS 1X). The pellets were stored at 4 C before
DNA extraction. Before extraction, the sludge samples were diluted
5 times to reach cell concentration of around 1010 /mL. Total DNA
was then extracted from samples using an automated nucleic acid
extractor (MagNA Pure Compact, Roche, Germany). The puried
DNA was then stored at 20 C before analysis.
16S rRNA gene quantications of the DNA samples were performed on LightCycler 480 II (Roche, Germany). The primer and
probe sets specic for two domains: bacteria (BAC) and archaea
(ARC); [23,24]. The reaction was performed with a total volume of
20 L mixture: 10 L of 2 X LightCycler 480 Probes Master, 4 L
of PCR-grade water, 2 L of TaqMan probe (nal concentration
200 nM), 1 L of each forward and reverse primer (nal concentration 500 nM), and 2 L of template DNA. The operation processes
consisted of a predenaturation step of 10 min at 95 C, amplication of 55 cycles (10 s) at 95 C and 30 s at 60 C, and cooling for
10 s at 40 C. Standard curves were constructed using those strains
corresponding to primer and probe sets used in this experiment
(Table 3). A 10-fold dilution series from 101 1010 copies/L of standard solution was established and analyzed by qPCR in duplicate

3. Results
3.1. Characterization of leachate
Fig. 2 shows the TCOD, SCOD, TVFA, ammonia and pH variation
of leachate produced from the simulated landll cell. As shown in
the Fig. 2, the TCOD values were very similar to that of the SCOD
values throughout operation of the pilot plant. This indicated that
the leachate TCOD largely comprised soluble organics. In the rst 8
weeks, leachate TCOD increased from 51.98 to 63.16 g/L, but later
decreased till the end of the study. Leachate TVFA concentration
was also higher at beginning of the operation. Around 15 g/L of
TVFA was observed in the leachate from the landll cell showing
acidogenesis had occurred in the landll cell. TVFA concentration
was stable and had remained at 16.67 1.34 g/L till Week 16. After
Week 16, TVFA concentration started to decrease in tandem with
COD. pH was also stable at 5.67 0.06 till Week 16. Then a sharp
increase of pH was observed in the leachate from the landll cell.
The pH of the leachate reached 7.92 at the end of the study. For
ammonia the concentration kept increasing until Week 20. The
ammonia variation indicated that the pilot-scale landll system
was not able to effectively remove ammonia in the process. Similar
results were obtained from previous studies on landll management [14,8,13]. However, since ammonia concentration was still
lower than 2000 mg/L, no inhibition effects was caused by the
ammonia in the system [21].
3.2. Performance of two-phase anSBR
3.2.1. Performance of two-phase anSBR before removal of RA
The performance of the two-phase anSBR was evaluated in
terms of COD, VFA and biogas production. As shown in Fig. 3, before
Week 7, landll leachate COD was consumed substantially at RA . As
shown in Fig. 4, VFA concentrations had also declined substantially.
Such performance indicated the acidogenic reactor had not functioned as such. Consumption of COD, especially VFAs, indicated the
occurrence of methanogenesis. As illustrated in Fig. 5, there was
high concentration of methane in RA biogas during this period of
time. The performance of RA before Week 7 indicated phase separation had possibly occurred between the landll cell and RA and
not necessarily between RA and RM .
After Week 7, COD was no longer substantially removed at RA ,
but there was also no substantial change in VFA either. This suggested there was no further organics conversion to VFAs in RA .
These observations would suggest the high VFA concentration in
the leachate had inhibited further acidogenesis in RA [25,26].
RM had shown substantial methanogenic activity from the
beginning of the study. In the rst 4 weeks of operation, since
the organic loading was low and RA had consumed substantial
amounts of COD, efuent COD of RM was low. As organic loading

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W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

80
10

70

8
50

TVFA
TCOD
SCOD

40
30

pH
NH4

20

pH; NH4 Conc.(g/L)

VFA, COD Conc. (g/L)

60

10
2
0
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

Time (w)
Fig. 2. Characterization of simulated landll leachate.

80

RAinf
70

RAeff
RMinf

60

RMeff

TCOD (g/L)

50
40
30
20
10
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

Time (w)
Fig. 3. TCOD variation of inuent and efuent of RA (RA inf and RA eff) and RM (RM inf and RM eff): RM inf is the same as RA eff before Week 18.

doubled after Week 4, and COD consumption at RA stopped, with

high inuent COD, a high removal rate of 88.5 3.1% was noted at
RM . Methane in the biogas from RM was 76.4 1.3% with a specic
methane production of 115.9 18.2 mL/gCOD. Daily production of
biogas gradually increased and reached 128.8 L/day in Week 14.
After Week 14, composition of biogas remained the same, but daily
production gradually declined with decrease in inuent COD to RM .
3.2.2. Performance of anSBR after removal of RA
As indicated above, RA did not contribute to the acidogenic process already initiated in the landll cell. This suggested the landll

cell may itself serve as the acidogenic reactor. Therefore, RA was

removed in Week 18.
After RA was removed from the system, the leachate was directly
fed into RM and from there recirculated back to the landll cell.
From Figs. 3 and 4, no signicant uctuations occurred in RM efuent in terms of COD and VFA even when the organic loading was
doubled after removal of RA . Efuent COD of RM remained low
at below 4 g/L and declined further with decreasing inuent COD.
Biogas composition remained similar but the production of biogas was more than doubled after increase of organic loading. The
specic methane production was 117.1 10.7 mL/gCOD which was

W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

40
35

441

10

RAinf

(a)

RMinf

30

RAinf

(b)

RAeff

RAeff

RMinf

RMeff

RMeff

25

HAc (g/L)

TVFAs (g/L)

6
20
15

10
2
5
0

0
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

10

15

Time (w)

20

25

30

35

Time (w)
6

RAinf

(c)

RAeff
RMinf
RMeff

HPr (g/L)

10

15

20

25

30

35

Time (w)
Fig. 4. TVFAs variation of inuent and efuent of RA (RA inf and RA eff) and RM (RM inf and RM eff): RM inf is the same as RA eff before Week 18.

similar to the value before Week 4. After Week 20 with COD further decreasing in the inuent landll leachate, efuent COD, VFA,
methane concentration in the biogas and biogas production gradually decreased to the low levels noted.
3.3. Microbial community dynamics in RA and RM
To evaluate the relative dominance of archaea to bacteria, the
parameter relative dominance of archaea (RDA) was introduced
and this was determined by the ratio between logarithm forms of
gene concentration of archaea to that of bacteria:
RDA =

log c (Archaea)
log c (Bacteria)

(1)

The qPCR assays revealed 16S rRNA gene concentration of the

domain bacteria (BAC) and archaea (ARC) in both reactors of anSBR
(Fig. 6). Bacteria was predominant in both reactors. In RA the microbial community structure was relatively stable. Gene concentration
of BAC was 4.78 1.76 1010 copies/mL, of which the variation
was less than one order of magnitude. Similarly, variation of ARC
gene concentration was also less than one order of magnitude
(5.12 2.12 109 copies/mL). The minor variation of gene concentration of both BAC and ARC led to stable RDA (0.91 0.01) in RA as

shown in Fig. 7a. These observations indicated that the microbial

community did not develop into one that favored the acidogenic
process, but remained as the original community in the seed sludge.
This was consistent with the performance of RA in which there was
little acidogenesis but methanogenesis was observed. As indicated
in the previous section, the low acidogenesis was likely caused by
inhibition from high concentration of VFAs [26].In RM , however,
the microbial community structure changed greatly throughout the
experiment. Gene concentration of BAC rst increased and then
decreased after removal of RA while the trend of ARC gene concentration increased (though minor decrease was observed in Week
14 and Week 32). Meanwhile, an increasing trend of RDA in RM
was also observed as shown in Fig. 7b. RDA increased from 0.777
to 0.901 indicating an evident process of enriching of ARC in RM .
This was in accordance with the improving efuent quality and the
high methane composition in biogas produced from RM . The low
ARC population observed in Week 4 should be due to lack of sufcient feed COD to RM . As shown in Figs. 3 and 4, RA consumed
most of the COD and VFA before Week 4, and less than half of
COD and VFA remained in RA efuent. As COD and VFA concentration in RA efuent increased afterwards, ARC population increased
correspondently.

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W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

(a)

Gas composition (%)

100

80

60

H2

40

CO2
CH4

20

0
0

10

12

14

16

18

Time (w)

(b)

Gas composition (%)

100

80

60

40

20

CO2
CH4

0
0

10

15

20

25

30

Time (w)
Fig. 5. Gas composition variation of biogas produced from: (a) RA and (b) RM .

4. Discussion
4.1. RA in anSBR treating simulated landll leachate
RA did not perform acidogenesis substantially as planned. The
landll leachate already contained high concentration of VFA
before entering RA . Removal of RA from the system did not
adversely impact system performance. This indicated that with
recirculation of leachate, the landll cell itself could perform acidogenesis. The RA role had been fullled by the landll cell which in
effect had served as the RA . Similar results had been reported by
[21] in which very limited increase (6.4%) of VFA in landll leachate
was observed after the acidogenic reactor. Leachate recirculation
has been reported to be effective at enhancing VFA and COD con-

centrations in landll leachate [8]. It should be noted, however, the

leachate used in this study and the studies reported is leachate from
a young landll in which existed large amounts of easily degradable
organic compounds.
The microbial community structure was consistent with the
performance of RA . There was no sign of a transition from
methanogenic community to an acidogenic community in RA (Figs.
6 and 7). It has been reported that in a typical acidogenic reactor, population of BAC would be 2 orders of magnitude higher than
that of ARC, while the difference between BAC and ARC population would be less than 1 order of magnitude in a methanogenic
reactor [27]. Therefore the microbial community structure of RA
indicated that landll leachate was not suitable for development of
an acidogenic reactor in the two-phase anSBR system.

16s rRNA gene Conc. (copies/mL)

W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

10

12

10

11

10

10

443

(a)

10

10

RA-ARC
RA-BAC

10

10

12

14

16

18

20

16s rRNA gene Conc. (copies/mL)

Time (w)
10

12

10

11

10

10

10

10

10

(b)

RM-ARC
RM-BAC
0

12

16

20

24

28

32

36

Time (w)
Fig. 6. Quantication of 16S rRNA gene concentration of archaea and bacteria in (a) RA and (b) RM .

4.2. Landll stabilization

Stabilization of wastes in a landll would typically proceed in
at least four phases, i.e., transition, acidogenesis, methanogenesis
and maturation [13,28]. As shown in Fig. 2, in the present study, the
rst two phases of the simulated landll cell took 78 weeks (when
COD reached its maximum value in the leachate). With the start of
the methanogenesis phase, COD in the landll gradually declined.
From the rate of this decline, the COD half-life can be calculated
[28]. COD half-life of the landll cell in this study was less than 10
weeks. Table 4 illustrates the COD half-life of landlls in studies
previously reported.

Table 4
COD half-lives in the present and other pilot- and full-scale studies of landll
leachate.
Reference

Scale

COD Half-Life, w

[29]
[29]
[13]
[28]
[29]
[29]
[28]
Present study

Pilot (anaerobic, recirculation)

Pilot (anaerobic, conventional)
Pilot (anaerobic, recirculation)
Pilot (anaerobic, recirculation)
Full (anaerobic, recirculation)
Full (anaerobic, conventional)
Full (anaerobic, recirculation)
Pilot (anaerobic, recirculation)

1733
14
2240
17
4054
521
55
10

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W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

1.10

(a)

1.05
1.00

RDA

0.95
0.90
0.85
0.80
0.75

RA

0.70
0

10

12

14

16

18

20

Time (w)
1.10

(b)

1.05
1.00
0.95

RDA

0.90
0.85
0.80
0.75
0.70

RM

0.65
0.60
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Time (w)
Fig. 7. RDA (relative dominance of archaea) in (a) RA and (b) RM .

As shown in Table 4, stabilization of the landll cell in the

present study was relatively very fast even though the leachate
recirculation rate was lower than 0.3% total waste volume/day. The
main reason of such fast stabilization could be attributed to the
inclusion of the ex-situ anSBR. While recirculation of the leachate
improved the microbial activities and the solubilization of organics in the landll cell, the anSBR converted the COD in the landll
leachate into methane. Moreover, with the low leachate recirculation, the anSBR inuent COD could be maintained at a relatively
high concentration and this resulted in a greater growth rate of
microbes in the reactors and hence a higher degradation ability as
indicated in Fig 7b.
Leachate stabilization is only one aspect of landll stabilization. The physical stabilization of wastes in the landll cell need
also be considered. The compaction ratio (by comparing the difference of the height of stabilized and original wastes in the

cell) and organic/inorganic ratio of the stabilized waste are two

important indices for waste stabilization. For the landll cell in
the present study, the compaction ratio of waste was 36.6%. The
organic/inorganic ratio of the wastes at the start of the process
and after 32 weeks of anSBR treatment were 69.8% and 46.6%,
respectivelyi.e., the organic/inorganic ratio declined from 70% to
47%. Considering that COD of landll leachate was reduced to a relatively low level, such observation showed that the anSBR effectively
enhanced stabilization of wastes before onset of the maturation
phase. Methanogenesis could not be maintained eventually due to
declining organic strength in the landll leachate and the landll
cell then transited into the maturation phase. It should be noted
the residual 47% organics content in the waste was still high. Large
amounts of slowly biodegradable organics may still exist in the
waste. Thus, in the next phase of landll stabilization (i.e., maturation phase), the rate limiting step for landll stabilization is the

W. Huang et al. / Biochemical Engineering Journal 105 (2016) 437445

solubilization of this slowly biodegradable particulates COD in the

waste.
Generally, it was shown that with the implementation of the
anaerobic reactor the pilot-scale landll could achieve fast stabilization with low leachate recirculation rate (at <0.3% of total waste
volume/day); development of microbial communities could be well
associated with the reactor performance in the present study. For
application of such management of landll, although it is generally
accepted that scaling-up of anaerobic degradation is much easier
than aerobic degradation it should be noted that adequate mixing for solids suspension and optimal temperature with minimized
gradients should be provided to ensure successful anaerobic degradation. In tropical areas, keeping an optimal and constant operating
temperature imposes less or no additional cost for heating of the
anaerobic reactor. In other areas, however, additional heater may
be needed to ensure optimal performance of anaerobic reactors
during colder seasons. Low-rate leachate circulation is used in the
present study so that the operation cost and risk of leachate leakage
is minimized. With fast stabilization and low-rate leachate recirculation the overall operation cost is further lowered compared with
conventional management of landll leachate.
5. Conclusions
The integrated leachate management with leachate recirculation and ex-situ anSBR is effective in speeding up the landll
stabilization. Development of microbial community structure was
well associated with the performance of reactors. Young landll can
not only behave as acidogenic reactor but also as energy source with
the leachate management applied in the present study. Studies of
two-phase anSBR treating old landll leachate which has lower
VFA but higher refractory organic concentration are recommended
for integrated leachate management that covers longer life-span of
landlls.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Singapore National Environmental Agency for providing funding for the project Enhanced
Biological and Physical Stabilization in Landlls.
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