The degradation of landfill leachate in the presence of different catalysts by sonolytic and sonocatalytic processes

In the study, the degradation of landfill leachate by single ultrasound (sonolytic) and sonolytic combined with Fe2+ and TiO2 catalysts was carried out in laboratory conditions. The effect of pH and ultrasonic wave amplitude was also investigated in terms of color removal, total organic carbon (TOC) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) from leachate by the sonolytic degradation process. In this process, the color removal efficiency was recorded as 81.81% at 620 nm, pH = 2.0 and 70% wave amplitude. The sonocatalytic degradation of landfill leachate accompanied by different catalysts was studied by using the 70% wave amplitude at pH = 2.0 and room temperature for 20 min. The sonocatalytic degradation of leachate by using Fe2+ and TiO2 was found to be significantly higher than sonolytic degradation (p < 0.05). As the Fe2+ concentration increased from 1.0 to 3.0 mg/L, the COD and color removal of leachate significantly decreased (p < 0.05) from 50 to 35.7% and from 95.5 to 90.9%, respectively. The experimental data obtained from sonocatalytic degradation was analyzed using the Behnajady–Modirshahla–Ghanbery (BMG) kinetic models and found to be compatible. The results showed that the combination of catalyst and sonolysis was a highly effective way to remove color, COD and TOC from landfill leachate. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.