Sustainable Wastewater Treatment Using Reed Bed

Abstract

A biological technology used for treating wastewater is reed beds (or constructed wetlands), which emerged as a low-cost system; and a natural process. This treatment has been developed in different countries due to its low cost compared to mechanical treatments and lower pollution-related issues.This work is used to design and implement a prototype of a reed bed for the purification of wastewater coming from the primary and secondary treatment plant. Moreover, it reduced the cost of treatment by finding an alternative to the tertiary treatment needed to minimize all aspects of environmental pollution that would appear if untreated wastewater was evacuated without treatment.This work compares the results of replacing tertiary wastewater treatment (WWT) with reed bed implementation. Different soil types were assessed in the laboratory setup to observe reed beds type that survives and grows in the various soils. The selected soil contained a mixture of clay (75%) and sand (25%). After implementing the prototype, water samples were taken from the outlet, where water quality parameters (such as Chloride, Nitrate, Nitrite, etc... ) were tested. In addition, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), and bacterial contamination such as Escherichia Coli (E. coli) and Coliform levels were measured in the environmental laboratory at the University of Balamand (UOB), Al Kurah city. It was seen that when comparing the samples from reed beds with initial wastewater, treatment coming from the secondary treatment process, the chemical and microbial levels values decreased. Therefore, this treatment can be an efficient alternative and tends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to tertiary treatment techniques.The samples obtained from the reed beds were compared simultaneously with the Lebanese Ministry of Environment standards and with the water quality of water coming from the effluent (tertiary treatment) of the wastewater from the UOB treatment plant.