Catalytic wet peroxide oxidation of leachate waters using low-cost carbon-based materials as catalysts
Conference Paper
Overview
Overview
abstract
The Directive 2008/98/EC established a hierarchy for management of Municipal Solid Waste
(MSW), according to which landfilling should be avoided. In this direction, Mechanical and
Biological Treatment (MBT) plants play an important role, since it allows the conversion of the
organic fraction of MSW into biogas and compost, with applications as fuel and fertilizer,
respectively. However, MBTs generate a wastewater, referred as leachate, with high load of
organic matter, that is not properly treated by conventional systems. In addition, the production
of compost in MBTs tends to be higher than its demand, resulting in accumulation on landfilling
sites. This works aims to address the Catalytic Wet Peroxide Oxidation (CWPO) of a real leachate
effluent obtained from a MBT, whose properties are summarized in Table 1. The compost
obtained from the MBT was considered to produce the catalyst for the CWPO process. The lowcost
catalytic materials were prepared by hydrothermal carbonization at previously optimized
operating conditions (230 ºC, 4 h and 130 gcompost/L). Figure 1 shows the profile of H2O2
decomposition, COD and TOC upon time of reaction at 50 °C (solid line) and at 80 °C (dashed
lines). At 80 °C, a removal of 40% and 55% for COD and BOD5, respectively, was achieved,
increasing BOD5/COD ratio from 0.33 to 0.45, along with a reduction on turbidity (to 12 NTU)
and color of the effluent, as observed in Figure 1.
This work was financially supported by project “VALORCOMP - Valorización de compost y otros desechos
procedentes de la fracción orgánica de los residuos municipales”, with reference 0119_VALORCOMP_2_P, through
FEDER under Program INTERREG; the Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM (UIDB/50020/2020) funded by national
funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC); CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020) through FEDER under Program PT2020, and
national funding by FCT, Foundation for Science and Technology, through the individual research grant
SFRH/BD/143224/2019 of Fernanda Fontana Roman.
