Project Description:
Polk County North Central Landfill and SMMRL began collaborating on a way to treat the landfill’s leachate in early 2019. The result of this collaboration was to design and build a Constructed Wetland Leachate Treatment System (CWLTS). The planned system will include an aeration pond, sedimentation pond, vertical flow wetland cells, and a free water surface wetland cell, and will be constructed and operated on the landfill’s property. The system has been designed to remove (but not limited to): ammonia, iron, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and trace metals, amongst other constituents present in the leachate. This project is planned to be completed in 2022, with operation of the system continuing into the future. Simultaneously, SMMRL researchers constructed pilot-scale versions of the vertical flow wetland cells. Research on these pilot-scale cells will guide future construction and operations of the CWLTS.
Lead Researcher: Dreyton Lott - djlott@ufl.edu