Physico-Chemical Characterization of Leachate from the Moulay Abdallah Technical Landfill Center (Morocco)

Abstract

The physico-chemical characterization of the leachate from the Technical Landfill Center (TLC) of Moulay Abdallah (MA) which is intended for the treatment of Household Waste (HW) and Waste Assimilated to Household Waste (HWA) as well as the elaboration of the results of the study that was carried out on the leachate from the Oum Azza (OA) Technical Landfill allowed comparing the leachate from two TLCs located in two different regions and exploited in two different ways. The parameters studied are Organic Matter (OM), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen (TKN) concentration, NH4+ ion concentration, conductivity, Suspended Solids (SS), Total Phosphorus (TP) and pH. The choice of these parameters comes down to their usefulness for the sizing of the leachate purification processes (PP) of the leachates of Moroccan typology, produced by the population of a coastal city. The results of the analyses show that the leachates from the two TLCs have almost the same physico-chemical characteristics. Depending on the method of management of the leachate (storage or direct discharge to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)), the evolution over time of these characteristics differed from one TLC to the other and all of the main leachate parameters from the TLC MA have all tended to increase over the time of operation. This is in contrast to the leachate parameters from the OA TLC, which all tended to decrease.