Removal of ammoniacal nitrogen ion in old landfill leachate by using biological stripping column

Ammonia stripping is a simple desorption process used to reduce ammonia content in wastewater stream. It is often easier and less expensive to remove nitrogen from wastewater in the form of ammonia rather than to convert it to nitrate-nitrogen before discharged to environment. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the ability of the sewage based bacteria use to remove the ammoniacal nitrogen ion in landfill leachate by using biological striping column. The system was setup by introducing activated carbon inoculums with sewage based bacteria as a biostripping media and were conducted at room temperature with a fixed hydraulic retention time (HRT) for 56 hours. The biological stripping column was operated at constant leachate feeding rates of 20 ml/min. At early stage of the experiment characterization of landfill leachate was measured including pH, COD, BOD5, alkalinity, TS, SS, NH4+ and heavy metal ion. In this study, three difference sizes of bio-stripping media was use to measured the effect of surface area to amount of ammonia gas release. Ammonia gas release from this system was channeled to sulfuric acid absorption column to recover the ammonia gas released in form of ammonium sulfate. The lowest ammonium ion concentration level after stripping process reduce to 80 mg/l and the reduction percentages of the ion are around 84%. Maximum ammonium sulfate produced from this experiment was around 244.0 mg/l.