Bioassay evaluation of toxicity reduction in common effluent treatment plant

Abstract

This paper investigates the utility and validity of bioassay toxicity testing using Daphnia magna straus as test organism for monitoring the common effluent treatment plant (CETP) receiving both industrial as well as domestic effluent. The average daphnia toxicity (Gd) at inlet, after primary settling tank (PST), secondary settling tank (SST) and tertiary treatment unit were reported as Gd-16, Gd-12, Gd-4 and Gd-1 respectively. However, a cumulative percentage removal in toxicity after PST, SST and tertiary treatment units was observed as 25%, 75% and 100%, respectively, during entire study period. It showed that a complete removal in daphnia toxicity (Gd) i.e.100% had been achieved only after tertiary treatment unit involving Dual Media Filters followed by activated carbon filters. Further attempts have been made to establish the relationship between key wastewater constituents i.e. Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Suspended Solids (SS) with respects to daphnia toxicity (Gd). It was observed that COD and SS show a statistically significant correlation (r2) with daphnia toxicity (Gd) i.e. 0.89 and 0.81, respectively. Thus COD and SS can serve as a regulatory tool in lieu of an explicit toxicity standard (to check and improve the operational status of wastewatertreatment plants in time).