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Recent trend to recover value-added products from wastewater calls for more effective pre-treatment technology. Conventional landfill leachate treatment is often complex and thus causes negative environmental impacts and financial burden. In order to facilitate downstream processing of leachate wastewater for production of energy or value-added products, it is pertinent to maximize leachate treatment performance by using simple yet effective technology that removes pollutants with minimum chemical added into the wastewater that could potentially affect downstream processing. Hence, the optimization of coagulation-flocculation leachate treatment using multivariate approach is crucial. Central composite design was applied to optimize operating parameters viz. Alum dosage, pH and mixing speed. Quadratic model indicated that the optimum COD removal of 54% is achieved with low alum dosage, pH and mixing speed of 750 mgL−1, 8.5 and 100 rpm, respectively. Optimization result showed that natural pH of the mature landfill leachate sample is optimum for alum coagulation process. Hence, the cost of pH adjustment could be reduced for industrial application by adopting optimized parameters. The inherent mechanism of pollutant removal was elucidated by FTIR peaks at 3853 cm−1 which indicated that hydrogen bonds play a major role in leachate removal by forming well aggregated flocs. This is concordance with SEM image that the floc was well aggregated with the porous linkages and amorphous surface structure. The optimization of leachate treatment has been achieved by minimizing the usage of alum under optimized condition.

Series of amorphous silicon carbon nitride (a-SiCN) films are synthesized using RF-PECVD technique on glass and silicon substrates from precursor gas of silane, methane and nitrogen. In this work, the change in nitrogen flow rate from 0 sccm to 50 sccm is a mean used to vary the elemental composition and bonding properties which lead to change in optical properties. The films thickness varies between 327 nm to 944 nm. The changes for the stated properties are discussed against the change in the stated nitrogen flow rate. The optical properties are investigated by means of UV-VIS spectroscopy in the wavelength range of 190 nm to 2500 nm. The transmittance of the films at ultra-violet wavelength is found to increases with increase in nitrogen flow rate. The index of refraction, n obtained for SiCN films from transmittance and reflectance measurements is lower compared to SiC films. The films optical band gap increases from 1.74 eV to 2.08 eV before it decreases to 1.89 eV as nitrogen flow rate increases fro...