Organic, nitrogen, and phosphorus removal in hospital wastewater treatment using activated sludge and constructed wetlands

Abstract

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, hospital becomes the main and critical facility in any countries. This has also negatively affected the environment, as the wastewater discharged was also increased. Wastewater treatment plant in the hospital will also be affected as there will be fluctuations in volume and quality of wastewater. Hence there is an urgency to choose the appropriate technology as main solution and to improve existing wastewater treatment plant. We will report the performance of integrated system of activated sludge and constructed wetlands applied in a hospital wastewater treatment plant. Both technologies were chosen because they are simple, cheap, and highly effective technologies for wastewater treatment. Activated sludge was able to reduce organic, ammonia, and phosphat content significantly. However, the quality of effluent was still not able to meet the regulation. Application of constructed wetlands as finishing treatment was able to improve the quality of effluent to meet the standard and resulted in BOD, COD, ammonia, and phosphate of 25 mg/L, 24.18 mg/L, <0.01 mg/L, and 0.46 mg/L, respectively. Hence it can be concluded that the integration of activated sludge and constructed wetlands can be an appropriate and effortless treatment system for low-strength wastewater to meet a strict quality standard.