Assessment of the biosorption capacity of activated sludge for leachate

Biosorption is an important process for removing pollutants from the environment, particularly due to its efficiency, low cost, and suitability for various types of wastewater. As an environmentally friendly technology, biosorption employs biological materials or microbial biomass to bind and remove pollutants, making it a valuable tool in sustainable water resource management. [1] With the increasing burden on water systems from industrial and municipal wastewater, there is a growing need for methods that can effectively reduce pollutant concentrations without high energy or chemical requirements. For this reason, biosorption is attracting increasing attention as a technique that enables fast, selective, and renewable treatment of complex waste streams. [2] In this study, a biosorption experiment was carried out under batch conditions using leachate and activated sludge with initial concentrations of 15.9 ± 0.7 g/L and 2.74 ± 0.21 g/L, respectively. The estimated Freundlich isotherm parameters, Kf and nf, were 10.91 L/g and 2.90. The R² value of 0.904 indicates a good model fit. These results confirm that the tested system demonstrates a significant biosorption capacity of 15.2 ± 2.2%.