Rapid and efficient mixing in leachate treatment by using charcoal as adsorption media / Solehah Azit

Activated carbon is widely use as adsorbent in leachate treatment but the cost of activated carbon is expensive. The use of charcoal as low cost adsorbents has been investigated as an alternative method of activated carbon. For this purpose 2g of charcoal was added into the leachate in the conical flask with agitation speed of 50-200 rpm and mixing time of 30 minutes-2 hours. The sizes of charcoal used were 2mm and 600pm and pH of leachate were adjusted to pH 2 and pH 9. Result shows that charcoal show good performance in reducing COD, color and suspended solid. The highest adsorption capacity of COD was observed at 97.5% at 30 minutes of shaking time and 50 rpm of mixing speed while for color, the highest percentage was 76.34% at 30 minutes of shaking time and 100 rpm of mixing speed. The highest percentage of suspended solid was observed at 78.26% at 30 minutes of shaking time and 200 rpm of mixing speed. From the result the optimum shaking time was obtained at 30 minutes with optimum mixing speed is at 50 rpm. This finding is interesting because it contribute to cost effectiveness with reasons of only short time and slow mixing speed required for achieving high percentage of removal for each parameter. From the study, charcoal is recommended as low cost adsorbent media in leachate treatment as an alternative of activated carbon since it show a good performance in organic removal.