Dr. Valdes-Morales, Hector

This study aims: (a) to characterize the raw leachate generated in the landfill of Fez city, and (b) to evaluate the feasibility to apply an aerobic treatment followed by a Fenton oxidation process. The aerobic treatment was conducted in a suspended grow bioreactor during 60 days. The bioreactor was monitored every 3 days, following the variation of pH, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), turbidity, conductivity, color number (CN), total suspended solids (TSS), nitrates (NO3−-N), nitrites (NO2−-N), and the absorbance values of the UV–vis spectrum. Results showed an elimination of41%, 31%, 50%, 52%, and 37%, on COD, BOD5, color number (CN), NO2−-N and NO3−-N, respectively. Thereafter, a Fenton oxidation process was successfully applied to the biological pre-treated leachate, improving the removal of COD, BOD5 and color to 73%, 99.5% and 94%, respectively.

In this work, the landfll leachate of Fez city (Morocco) is characterized physicochemically and the feasibility to apply a Fenton process is evaluated. A design of experiments based on Box–Behnken combined with a response surface methodology was used to assess the efect of three operating variables (pH, Fe2+ and H2O2 dosages) on two target responses: COD and color removal. The results of the analysis of variances demonstrate that both responses are signifcantly afected by Fe2+ dosage and pH. Statistical and graphical analyses show that maximum efciencies of 85% and 96% are obtained in terms of COD and color removal, respectively, when operating conditions are set in pH=2.8, [Fe2+]=1621 mg L−1 and [H2O2]=2500 mg L−1.