Evaluation of short-term pilot reed bed performance for real domestic wastewater treatment

Abstract

Abstract Domestic wastewater is one of the sources of pollutant for water bodies if not disposed properly. Reed bed system is very potential to be used to treat domestic wastewater as it is good in terms of overall performance, low in operation and maintenance costs, and environmentally friendly. This study examined the overall performance of pilot reed bed system planted with two native Malaysian plants of Scirpus grossus and Lepironia articulata in treating real domestic wastewater under short term batch reactor. Four systems were used in this experiment, in which first system planted with S. grossus, second system planted with L. articulata, third system planted with 50% S. grossus + 50% L. articulata, and the fourth system was left unplanted as control reactor. A total of 5 days of parameters observation and two sampling points (on the top of medium and at the bottom of medium) were chosen to analyse the effect of the treatment period and the contribution of rhizosphere area to the overall reed bed performance. The planted system performed very well in removing pollutant reaching up to 99% for TSS, 99.7% for BOD, 96.6% for COD, 100% for ammonium, and 99.6% for phosphate. The addition of plants significantly increased the DO concentration inside reed bed. Both plants showed no significant difference performance in terms of the removal efficiencies. There was a significant difference in terms of removal between both sampling points (up and down) at day 0 and day 1, indicating that rhizosphere area played a very important role in the treatment of wastewater which provide lower pollutant concentration in shorter period of time. There are no significant differences obtained for measured parameter at day 3 and day 5 in all reactor, indicating that the systems already achieved the steady state at day 3 of the observation.