Iranian Scientists Find Low-Cost Way to Filter Leachate

Hamidreza Tousi, a student at Shahid Beheshti University and a member of the faculty of Chemistry of the Islamic Azad University, Qa’emshahr branch, and Morteza Ra’yati, a member of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the university, succeeded in patenting a leachate treatment device.

The municipalities, as the custodians of urban waste collection and waste management, are parties to any possible contract for purchasing the device.

“The device consists of four parts of disinfection, settling of suspended pollution, surface absorption and filtration, and one of its features is the use of cheap materials in preparation of absorption filters which are all available in Iran,” Tousi told ANA.

He described another advantage of the leachate treatment device as the simplicity of treatment process and the absence of waste production, saying, “In the disinfection part, all pathogens and disease-causing agents are destroyed, and then sedimentary materials are removed from the solution stream by using filters made of mineral pumice.”

“In the next step, the remaining substances in the leachate are separated from the solution with the help of activated carbon filters, ultrafiltration and RO, and the purified water meets the environmental standards necessary for use in agricultural sector and discharge into the surface waters,” Tousi said. 

In a relevant development last year, an Iranian expert invented a method for the biological treatment of landfill leachate to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Mehdi Badri told ANA that the biological treatment of landfill leachate converts carbon dioxide into oxygen and this will increase the efficiency of greenhouses by 30 percent.

Garbage leachate is one of the most polluted liquids on the planet so a glass of it can dry up a whole and sturdy tree.

Therefore, if the leachate enters the surface and subsurface water, it causes a lot of pollution and can cause 118 types of disease, Badri explained.

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