Abstract
There are many wastewater treatment and reuse technologies available for smallscale, decentralised and integrated applications. Selection of the most appropriate technologies should be made to ensure public health and environmental quality is protected, while also considering possible construction limitations and ongoing management and maintenance issues. Choosing from the large range of onsite wastewater treatment systems can therefore be complex and time consuming, which may cause the involved parties to disregard a decentralised approach, or alternatively select inappropriate technologies. In order to make the technology selection process easier a Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Technology Database has been developed. It includes a range of commercially available products from both Australia and overseas in the following categories:
• Aerobic treatment units;
• Sand, soil and peat filters;
• Composting systems;
• Ponds and constructed wetlands;
• Anaerobic digestion;
• Physico-chemical systems;
• Advanced filtration;
• Urine separation and treatment; and others.
The various products in each category are grouped into subcategories based on the different treatment processes. The categories and subcategories are provided with process description, comparative evaluation and suggestions for application. The database helps to provide a more straightforward and simplistic means of decentralised wastewater system technology choice, and can be used by land owners, developers and associated governing bodies to reduce the complexity associated with developing decentralised wastewater systems.