Fungal treatment for recalcitrant compounds removal in raw leachate and synthetic solutions

Landfill leachate is a strongly polluted wastewater. Although different strategies have been developed for landfill leachate treatment, several drawbacks, such as high costs and complexity, are still unresolved. Fungi, and especially White-Rot Fungi (WRF) with their extracellular enzymes, are gaining considerable research interests among bio-based industries as they resulted effective toward several types of pollutants. Besides the promising results achieved with WRF on difficult wastewaters, at the moment only a limited number of studies has been reported about the use of WRF in landfill leachate treatment. The present work is focused on the treatment of leachate and diverse recalcitrant compounds using the White-rot fungus Bjerkandera adusta MUT2295 through batch tests. The fungal strain was inoculated in raw leachate (RL) from a Canadian landfill (Brady Road) and 2 recalcitrant synthetic solutions prepared with tannic acid (TA) and humic acid (HA).