Chemical Precipitation of Ammonia and Phosphate from Nam Son Landfill Leachate, Hanoi

Leachate from municipal landfills of the city is often contaminated heavily, especially for parameters such as organic components, heavy metals, microorganisms. However, leachate also contains amounts of valuable nutrients (e.g. N, P, K) which can be used for agriculture as fertilizers. Precipitated of N and P in the form of struvite (MgNH4PO4.6H2O) might be applied as a technique for removal a huge amount of N as well as P in wastewater. This study investigated the recovery ability of N, P in leachate from Nam Son municipal landfill of Hanoi city. Different pH values, anaerobic time and stoichiometric Mg: NH4: PO4 was tested to determine the optimal conditions for precipitating struvite. The effect of pH on the forming of struvite was between pH 9 to 11. The results showed that nutrients in landfill leachate could be recovered with the optimum pH around 9.5 and the optimum Mg: NH4: PO4 molar ratio as 1.15: 1: 1. With the anaerobic interval of 21 days, COD value in landfill leachate was decreased to 60%, the retrieval reached 80.6% for nitrogen and 82.7% for phosphorus. According to estimates, with the application of struvite precipitation technique, the average annual retrieval amount of NH4 and PO4 can reach 263 tons and 25 tons, respectively.