As part of the cultural season of the Environmental Research Center
assistant lecturer Muwafaq Hussein Mohammed-lecturer in the Department of Environmental Pollution-ERC presented a lecture on Tuesday, 24/12/2019 at 12:00 entitled “Floating Treatment Wetlands-New Technology for Wastewater Treatment”.
The lecturer stated that constructed wetlands (CWs), in the recent decades, are being increasingly used for water quality improvement during wastewater treatment. This is, in part, a result of increasingly strict water quality standards which mean that conventional secondary treatment may not be sufficient to comply with targets in receiving waters. CWs are engineered ecosystems that exploit different natural remediation mechanisms from biotic and abiotic components for water quality improvement. These systems have been created with different designs, including free water surface constructed wetlands (FWS CWs) and subsurface flow constructed wetlands (SSF CWs). These wetlands have been used worldwide as a tertiary polishing stage during wastewater treatment, and their performance in removing nitrogen were evaluated. One advantage of FWS CWs is that they are inexpensive to operate and maintain. However, inadequate surface area for microbial growth for a given volume and the lack of direct contact between water column and plant roots are deemed critical limitations in their performance for removing nitrogen.
To overcome these limitations, one possible solution is the floating wetland technology. Floating treatment wetland (FTW) is an eco-engineered system, that integrates the functions of the FWS CW and floating treatment island for water quality improvement. Increasing decontamination surface areas and direct contact with contaminants as well as harnessing range of biogeochemical processes such as microbial transformations, plant uptake, and physical filteration to eliminate contaminants are the central mechanisms of applying FTWs. FTW has, therefore, been developed as an lternative and effective wetland design for sewage-industrial wastewater quality improvement.
