Abstract
This study investigates the efficacy of floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) for retrofitting waste-stabilization ponds (WSPs) operating in cold continental climates, such that in Alberta, Canada. The objective was to determine whether WSPs augmented with FTWs could achieve equal or superior treatment efficiency at shorter hydraulic retention times (HRTs of 25–45 days) than those required in the conventional WSPs (60–365 days). A field study was carried out on treatment of domestic wastewater in a two-stage pilot-scale FTW mesocosm (i.e., FTW treatment train composed of Stage 1 and Stage 2 FTW cells (), with an overall volume of 84 and per cell). An identical system without FTW served as a control (i.e., control treatment train of ). Overall, the FTW-augmented WSP system achieved greater treatment of 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (), total suspended solids (TSS), total nitrogen (TN), ammonium nitrogen (), dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), and total phosphorus (TP) than the control. The corresponding removal efficiencies were 91.5% versus 85.0%, 91.3% versus 87.7%, 85.0% versus 75.6%, 93.9% versus 86.1%, 77.6% versus 57.7%, and 75.8% versus 58.7%, with a statistically significant difference () for all except TSS. This difference in performance resulted from the better performance of the Stage 1 FTW cell for , TN, and removal, and the Stage 2 FTW cell for DRP and TP removal. Simultaneous nitrification-denitrification (SND) occurred in the FTW treatment train, whereas only nitrification occurred in the control treatment train, which resulted in statistically higher TN removal efficiency in the former. Contribution of plant uptake to phosphorus removal was marginal (6.76%) and adsorption-desorption on solid particles was assumed to be the major removal pathway. The FTWs generally decreased the physicochemical parameters, with stronger effects on diurnal variations than seasonal fluctuations. The effect of FTW on daily physicochemical conditions played a key role in superior performance of FTW treatment.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
This project was completed with the financial support of Environment Canada (through the Lake Winnipeg Basin Stewardship Fund), Source2Source, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Mitacs. Without the ongoing guidance and cosupervision of Dr. Jianxun He (University of Calgary) and Bernie Amell (Source2Source), this project could not achieve its goals and objectives. Technical support in the laboratory was provided by Daniel Larson and Mirsad Berbic, which was indispensable to the analysis. The authors would like to extend their gratitude to specific individuals who provided additional materials, labor, and guidance for this project, including Sadegh Hosseini (University of Calgary), Cecilia Chung, Wendell Koning, and Rob Wolfe (Alberta Environment and Parks), Dave Churchill and his staff (Wheatland County), Erik Vandist (Vita Water Technologies), Ray Shaw (Knutson and Shaw Growers), and Anton Skorobogatov (Source2Source).
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Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 6 • June 2021
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Sep 22, 2020
Accepted: Dec 18, 2020
Published online: Mar 19, 2021
Published in print: Jun 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Aug 19, 2021
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