BeneTerra Addresses Landfill Leachate Reduction at WasteQ Conference
Chief Technical Officer, John Zupancic and chemical engineer, Harini Pani, presented a paper entitled, “Landfill leachate volume reduction and chemical transformation with BeneVap submerged combustion treatment” at the Waste Management Association of Australia Queensland (WMAA) Conference last October. Both presented findings of chemical analyses of leachate before and after evapoconcentration within the BeneVap system.
The BeneVap submerged combustion technology not only reduces leachate volume by more than ninety percent but several significant chemical changes were noted between the leachate and concentrate. For example; over ninety eight percent of the ammonia in the leachate was lost from the solution and numerous metals were made insoluble as they combined with carbonates, phosphate and silicate.
John Zupancic
When asked about the potential for source term depletion of leachate constituents over the life of a landfill cell, Zupancic said, “We believe that in the future, we will be able to customise previous and post treatment to optimise ammonia loss and sequester metals in the BeneVap concentrate.”
Pani specialises in predicting chemical transformation of varying leachate qualities to anticipate the effects of heating and concentration during the BeneVap treatment. She performs lab bench simulations and runs computational models to estimate the effects of evapoconcentration. Currently, she’s gathering more empirical data to refine the predictive models.
John Zupancic is also Managing Director of BeneTerra with offices in Brisbane and Sheridan, WY, USA. His background in soil and water chemistry has aided in solving wastewater and land related problems for over 30 years. He holds a BSc degree from Colorado State University and an MSc from the University of Nebraska.
Alastair Berking, our newest intern and avid rugby player, specifically chose BenTerra because it’s environmental services offered are unique and incorporate numerous ideas and concepts that are possible groundbreaking technologies in the near future. “I believe BeneTerra is the perfect place to be for that reason,” Berking said.
We recently employed a comprehensive mobile water treatment process in a remote location to de-water a pond holding saline water produced during gas production. The water was passed through disc filters, microfilters and reverse osmosis. The RO permeate was used for road dust suppression and the RO reject was further concentrated with BeneTerra’s EvC™. The dense concentrate was then hauled to a fit-for-purpose brine dam. By dispersing permeate and concentrating in-situ over 40,000 km of truck movements were eliminated.