A Closed Loop Wastewater Biorefinery Based on the Recently Introduced SHEFROL Reactor and Two Freely Available Macrophytes

Abstract

With an objective to develop a closed loop wastewater biorefinery, the performance of two free floating aquatic weeds water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes, Mart, Solms) and salvinia (Salvinia molesta, Mitchell) is explored when either is used as the main bioagent for treating sewage in “sheet flow root level” (SHEFROL) bioreactors. Both the macrophytes prove to be easy to propagate and maintain while they are able to help in achieving significant primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment steps of greywater in a single step. Water hyacinth is able to remove suspended solids, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total Kjeldahl nitrogen, soluble phosphorous, zinc, copper, nickel, and manganese to the average extents of 81%, 79%, 43%, 41%, 40%, 36%, 34%, and 29%, respectively. The reduction in COD and BOD levels achieved by salvinia is marginally lesser than by water hyacinth but in terms of the removal of other pollutants, the performance of salvinia is comparable to that of water hyacinth. It is possible to convert the dead or harvested plants to organic fertilizer thus making it a closed‐loop system with no waste of its own.