Application of seaweed as an alternative for leachate treatment of heavy metal

Improper management of sanitary landfill will become a huge problem to the environment. The main pollution occur by sanitary landfill is the generation of leachate which will affect groundwater, ecosystem and also human health because of the highly content of heavy metal. The removal of heavy metal in leachate has become important to maintain water quality standard before it will discharge to environment. In this study, the removal efficiency of heavy metal by seaweed was examined. Three optimum conditions have been selected to design high efficiency of treatment system which is optimum contact time, optimum pH of sample and optimum seaweed dosage. The removal performance was found on 40 minutes of contact time with the removal efficiency is 53.30%. For the optimum biosorption, pH value of Fe²⁺ was determined at 8 at a lab temperature. And 500mg amount of seaweed for 100mL was obtained as the most optimum removal of metal by seaweed. Biosorption of metal in raw leachate by seaweed was examined by taken the optimum condition obtained. Two metals in leachate sample, Fe²⁺ and Mn²⁺ was analyzed and the maximum percentage uptake value is 38.90% for Fe²⁺ and 52.90% for removal efficiency percentage of Mn²⁺. From this, it can be concluded that seaweed has a potential in heavy metal absorption in leachate. From the optimum condition obtained, suitable wastewater treatment in heavy metal removal by seaweed was proposed.