Baihuipu Completes Landfill Leachate Treatment System

Baihuipu has completed a landfill leachate treatment system for a municipal solid waste site in southern China, where the old equalization pond had been discharging a dark, high-ammonia stream that the local regulator flagged twice in a year. The package plant was shipped, installed and commissioned over an eleven-week window and took over from the pond in late October. It handles up to 200 m3/d of raw leachate at COD around 12,000 mg/L and ammonia above 1,500 mg/L, and discharges below 100 mg/L COD and 15 mg/L total nitrogen after biological pretreatment, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. The design separates the biological stage, which removes most of the ammonia and biodegradable COD, from the membrane stage, which polishes the refractory fraction the bugs cannot touch.

Key Features and Benefits

Biological Pretreatment Does the Heavy Lifting First

The leachate arrives with both ammonia and a large biodegradable COD load, and trying to membrane-treat it raw would blind the NF and RO with organics and scaling in weeks. A two-stage aerobic suspended-growth reactor with internal nitrification handles the ammonia, while an anoxic zone returns nitrate for denitrification so the nitrogen leaves as gas rather than accumulating in the tanks. Much of this mirrors the situation set out in Baihuipu Supplies Sidestream Filtration for Cooling Circuits system.

We set out the wider process route in leachate membrane bioreactor.

We sized the biological stage against the wet-season peak, not the dry-season sample the client first supplied. Leachate strength swings with rainfall, and a train sized for the average would have washed out during the first monsoon. The equalization tank upstream now holds two days of flow so the biology sees a steadier feed than the landfill actually produces. Plants dealing with comparable loads face many of the same trade-offs covered in baihuipu publishes desalination energy cost benchmark.

Membranes Polish What Biology Cannot

After biology the water still carries colour, refractory organics and trace heavy metals that no bug will eat. A sand-and-cartridge guard protects a nanofiltration stage, which rejects the bulk of the colour and divalent salts, followed by a single RO pass that takes the permeate under the discharge limit. The NF concentrate and RO reject are combined and sent to the landfill for evaporation rather than released. Plants dealing with comparable loads face many of the same trade-offs covered in baihuipu delivers brackish water ro system to industrial park.

Recovery was set at about 78 percent so the combined reject volume stays manageable for the site evaporation pans. Pushing recovery higher would have forced a more expensive brine concentrator; at this scale the evaporation area was the cheaper answer.

Numbers from Comparable Installations

For comparison, our 2022 project in Chengdu, Sichuan ran at 76 m³/day with influent COD near 2,000 mg/L and treated water around 300 mg/L. That is 85% removal in practice, not on paper.

Figures are site-measured values from commissioned plants, not modelled estimates.

A Skid the Site Team Can Keep Running

The whole train is containerized on two skids, so the civil works were a concrete pad and a power feed rather than a building. Online instruments cover permeate COD, conductivity, ammonia and flow, and the control panel logs them by shift so the operator can see a membrane fouling trend before it becomes a shutdown.

During commissioning we ran the permeate against laboratory COD and ammonia for three weeks before accepting the online readings as the operating reference. As-built drawings, a membrane cleaning procedure and a two-year spares list were handed over with the plant.

Technical Specifications

Leachate quality entering and leaving the system, averaged over the first four weeks of operation:

Why Choose Baihuipu as Your Manufacturer

Two decades in this industry teaches you that most treatment problems are procurement problems in disguise. Someone bought the cheapest skid, nobody checked the equalisation volume, and eighteen months on the plant cannot hold its consent limit. We build differently.

In-House Fabrication

Our Guangdong works produces everything from standard modular units to fully bespoke lines. Building in-house keeps cost, schedule and quality under our own control rather than a subcontractor's goodwill.

20+ Years Across Dozens of Industries

Experience matters most when your waste stream behaves nothing like the textbook example. We have dealt with toxic organics, heavy metals, extreme salinity and refractory COD in food processing, chemical manufacturing, electroplating, mining and municipal projects.

Certification and Export Practice

CE marking is standard and we work to ISO 9001 procedures. Where a project calls for specific material grades, pressure vessel certification or ATEX-rated equipment, we build to that standard and ship the full documentation pack.

We Engineer the Whole Train

Screening, equalisation, biological or chemical treatment, membranes, evaporation, brine handling — the complete line comes from one organisation. Process design, mechanical, electrical and PLC programming sit under the same roof, so there is no gap for finger-pointing at handover.

Twenty-Plus Export Markets

We have shipped to the United States, Canada, Russia, Indonesia, India, Nigeria and Vietnam among others. Crating, export documentation and certificates are handled in-house, which keeps customs surprises to a minimum.

Documentation You Can Actually Audit

Each system ships with as-built drawings, material certificates, welding records and a functional specification. If a client's own consultant wants to review the process calculation basis, we hand it over rather than treating it as proprietary.

Spares, Service and Commissioning

Membranes, dosing pumps, diffusers, instrumentation and blowers are stocked for the systems we sell. Our control systems support remote diagnostics, and we can put an engineer on site for commissioning, training or an unplanned shutdown.

Talk to Our Engineers

Send through your raw water data and we will advise on the viable process route and realistic operating cost before you commit to anything. We can be reached on WhatsApp: +86 13631765076 or through hkbhp.com.

WhatsApp: +86 13631765076

Customer FAQs

What is the standard landfill leachate treatment process?

For young to medium-age leachate the common train is biological pretreatment for ammonia and biodegradable COD, followed by nanofiltration and reverse osmosis to remove colour, refractory organics and salts. Very old, stabilized leachate with little biodegradable material may skip or shrink the biology and lean harder on membranes.

Can landfill leachate be discharged directly after biological treatment?

Usually not. Biology removes ammonia and biodegradable organics but leaves colour, refractory COD and salts that most discharge limits still exceed. The membrane stage is what brings the permeate under a typical limit of 100 mg/L COD and low total nitrogen.

What happens to the membrane concentrate?

The NF and RO reject carries the rejected salts, colour and organics. At smaller sites it is returned to the landfill for evaporation or mixed into the daily cover; larger sites may add a brine concentrator or crystallizer to reduce the volume further.

How often do the membranes need cleaning?

With the sand-and-cartridge guard in place, a clean-in-place every six to ten weeks has held flux at this site. The control panel flags a rising differential pressure or falling permeate flow, which is the cue rather than a fixed calendar date. The operating detail behind this sits in advanced oxidation refractory COD.

Readers planning similar projects often also read Baihuipu Launches Containerized Seawater Desalination Plant and Baihuipu Signs Overseas EPC Wastewater Plant Contract for the process detail behind these systems.