The stationary plant treats leachate from the landfill that receives waste from the city of Catania as well as surrounding areas on Sicily. After a pre-treatment by intense rotting to reduce the organic load, the waste is dumped in the landfill. Arising gases are sucked off and converted into electricity in the adjacent combined heat and power plant. The produced electricity of more than thousand kilowatts is fed into the public power grid.

Landfill leachate consists of liquids created by organic and inorganic waste decomposition and rainwater seeping into the landfill. Typically, leachate is heavily loaded with COD, BOD5, ammonia, pesticides and partially with heavy metals and requires a safe disposal to protect surrounding soil, ground water and surface water. So far, the leachate from Catania’s landfill has been costly disposed of by external service providers. With APATEQ’s “LeachPaq”, the leachate is treated directly on site. It combines field-proven ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis with innovative process technologies, resulting in a high performance system at lowest operating costs, allowing the plant to be amortized within several months of operation. The produced effluent meets the prevailing legislation for direct discharge. The water will be re-used for discharge into the environment or irrigation, truck washing and dust control of the landfill’s crushed rock roads.

“Using the latest technology standards for membrane filtration, our system operates at highest efficiency level and very low cost”, said APATEQ CTO Ulrich Bäuerle. “As the intervals between the plant’s cleaning procedures are several months and since weekly CIP’s (Clean-in-Place) are not required, the LeachPaq’s operating costs are considerably reduced and the availability of the system is far higher than of competing products for leachate treatment, such as systems utilizing plate or disk membranes.”

The LeachPaq for Sicula Trasporti is fully automated and can be remote controlled. The plant is scheduled for delivery by the end of 2018.