Bioaugmentation in a pilot-scale constructed wetland to treat domestic wastewater in summer and autumn

Abstract

In order to determine whether bioaugmentation is an effective technique in wetlands before the plants were harvested, the nitrogen (N) removal from a constructed wetland (CW) planted with Phragmites was evaluated after inoculating with Paenibacillus sp. XP1 in Northern China. The experiment was loaded with secondary effluent of rural domestic wastewater (RDW) using the batch-loaded method for over a 17-day period in summer and autumn. Chemical oxygen demand (CODcr), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), and total nitrogen (TN) decreased significantly in the CW with Phragmites inoculated with Paenibacillus sp. XP1. Four days after treatments were set up, the removal efficiencies were found to be 76.2% for CODcr, 83% for NH3-N, and 63.8% for TN in summer and 69.5% for CODcr, 76.9% for NH3-N, and 55.6% for TN in autumn, which were higher than the control group without inoculation during the entire 17-day experiment. The inoculated bacteria did not have a noticeable effect on total phosphorus (TP) removal in autumn. However, bioaugmentation still keep a low P concentration in the whole CW. First-order kinetic model represented well the CODcr, TN, and TP decay in CWs with bioaugmentation, resulting in very good coefficients of determination, which ranged from 0.97 to 0.99. It indicated that bioaugmentation would be an effective treatment for pollutant removal from RDW in the CWs.