The objectives of this article were to investigate the favorable environment and operational conditions to the development of the anaerobic biodegradability test for landfill leachate. The evaluated conditions were the relation food/microrganismo (A/M), seed acclimatization, and toxicity due to high ammonia concentration. The results indicated that A/M relation equivalent to 0,45 was presented as most favorable to the accomplishment of the test, and that the seed used presented good capacity of adaptation to the leachate, not demanding previous acclimatization. The leachate in question presented relatively low anaerobic biodegradability, and associated to the results of previous studies of aerobic biodegradability suggest that a significant fraction of organic substance is refractory to the aerobic and anaerobic metabolism, indicating that the physical-chemical treatment must be used as form of pre or post-treatment.
Landfill leachate; biodegradability; biochemical methane potential (BMP)
