Conference paper
ECONOMICAL GREYWATER TREATMENT WITH SUBMERGENTS
19/04/1999
Abstract
Aquatic plants offer a technically simple, low cost, energy-efficient method of treating domestic greywater. Aquatic plant systems, such as reeds and rushes, require little technical backup and are easy to maintain. They take up and store nutrients themselves, and provide a growing area for microorganisms which, in turn, further contributes to nutrient removal. Species of Triglochin, commonly known as water ribbons throughout coastal Australia, are fast growing submergent macrophytes. Triglochin and some emergent plants, such as Typha and Scirpus, seem to be adapted to high nutrient concentrations. Triglochin huegelii can also tolerate a range of water regimes and this is useful in wastewater treatment applications. Initial studies using Triglochin huegelii, a Western Australian species, in wastewater treatment experiments has shown that Triglochin has consistently removed more nitrogen and phosphorus, in all parts of the plant-leaves, tubers and roots, than most other indigenous emergent macrophyte species. Our recent results have again shown that these types of plants do effectively assimilate nutrients from greywater. There has been an increase in Total N and Total P in biomass measurements of Triglochin huegelii leaves, roots and tubers. Several further experiments were conducted using different environmental conditions for the plants. A comparison was made between root zone and complete pond conditions, with some changes to loading rate and retention times. We found that more nutrients were absorbed by the plants in the pond system, with greater differences in nitrogen levels in the leaves (x2) than in underground roots and tubers (x1.6). This paper examines the possibility of a pond system removing more nutrients as the leaves themselves can be directly involved in nutrient removal.
Details
- Title
- ECONOMICAL GREYWATER TREATMENT WITH SUBMERGENTS
- Authors/Creators
- Ross Mars (Author) - Murdoch UniversityR. Taplin (Author) - Murdoch UniversityKuruvilla Mathew - Murdoch UniversityGoen E Ho (Author)
- Identifiers
- 991005613270107891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- Murdoch University
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Conference paper
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