ABSTRACT
Plasticisers are commonly found in landfill leachate and accumulate in the environment. Some of them are known as disruptive endocrine compound. This manuscript assessed the toxicity of three common plasticisers, including Bis(2-Ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), o-hydroxybiphenyl (HBP) and 2,6-di-tert-butyl-4-(dimethylaminomethyl) phenol (MAMP) on the methanogens during the anaerobic process. It was found that DEHP and MAMP did not impede methanogenesis up to 200 mg/L, but no additional methane could be obtained from their degradation. In contrast, HBP severely inhibited methanogens at 200 mg/L, but after acclimatisation it could be metabolised resulting in a 25% increase in methane production compared to the control.
Subject(s)
Plasticizers/toxicity , AnaerobiosisABSTRACT
In this study, various methods were compared to reduce the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) content of stabilised leachate from a Submerged Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (SAMBR). It was found that Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) resulted in greater COD removals (84 %) than Granular Activated Carbon (GAC-80 %), an ultrafiltration membrane of 1kDa (75 %), coagulation-flocculation with FeCl(3) and polyelectrolyte (45 %), FeCl(3) alone (32 %), and polymeric adsorbents such as XAD7HP (46 %) and XAD4 (32 %). Results obtained on the <1 kDa fraction showed that PAC and GAC had a similar adsorption efficiency of about 60 % COD removal, followed by XAD7HP (48 %), XAD4 (27 %) and then FeCl(3) (23 %). The post-treatment sequence UF+GAC would result in a final effluent with less than 100 mg COD/L. Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC) revealed that the extent of adsorption of low MW compounds onto PAC was limited due to low MW hydrophilic compounds, whereas the kinetics of PAC adsorption depended mainly on the adsorption of high MW aromatics.
