The purification of wastewater on a small scale by using plants and sand filter

Abstract

The canteen and laboratory of every academic organization need a lot of clean water, and it generates equivalent amount of wastewater every hour which is neither purified nor reused. Due to water scarcity, the recycling and reusing of wastewater become very essential. The present study describes the simple and cost-effective method for the design of a small-scale wastewater treatment plant for the purification of wastewater generated by household, canteen and laboratory of an academic institute. The current study explored the process of phytoremediation by Typha latifolia L. and Canna indica L. for removal of metal ions and phosphate ions from the wastewater. The partially treated water after phytoremediation was further purified by sand filtration. The various water quality parameters (pH, hardness, dissolved oxygen, chemical oxygen demand, turbidity, total dissolved solids and metal ions) of the treated and untreated water were analyzed. It was observed that there are significant reduction in hardness, turbidity and chemical oxygen demand and increase in dissolved oxygen value. The treated water can be reused for various household works and agriculture.

Systematic Review of the Efficiency of Aquatic Plants in the Wastewater Treatment

“…The main desirable characteristics of aquatic plants are Morphological and physiological adaptations for development in different aquatic environments, leaves with morphological modifications, and special structures that allow them the ability to float on the surface of the water [4] [26]. However, these aquatic plants have characteristics that contribute to the advantages and disadvantages for treatment as shown in table 3, generally, the floating leaves are oval and succulent while the submerged leaves are branched and filamentous, these plants are large, showy, and brightly coloured or they can also be tiny and modified to survive in an aquatic environment with pollination [27] [28]. We can classify them as:…”

Experimental evaluation of sand filtration and ultrafiltration as subsequent treatment of coagulation for fluoride removal

“…The initial values of the various water quality parameters are quite high which indicate the high impurity level in untreated water generated from chemistry laboratory and canteen. There is substantial improvement in all the water quality parameters after treatment 27 . Ibrahim et al developed a pilot plant of sand filter mixed with other filtration media which was tested for its ability to improve the sand performance in removing the suspended solids and organic matters from agricultural drain water of the Belbeis drain.…”

“…In this study, a comparison has been made on the performance of sand filter and ultrafiltration for reduction of Al in water. Many researchers have investigated about the performance of sand filter with different filter media for wastewater treatment, but reduction of Al has not been studied 27–29 …”

“…There is substantial improvement in all the water quality parameters after treatment. 27 Ibrahim et al developed a pilot plant of sand filter mixed with other filtration media which was tested for its ability to improve the sand performance in removing the suspended solids and organic matters from agricultural drain water of the Belbeis drain. It was observed that COD removal efficiency and suspended solids removal efficiency was around 77% and 89%, respectively.…”

Methylated mud snail protein as a bio-flocculant for high turbidity wastewater treatment

“…These high turbidity effluents with high levels of suspended solids, can increase the processing cost, cause insufficient light flux and great harm to the aquatic ecosystem. To address this, flocculation, membrane technologies, electro-flocculation and constructed wetlands have been used for high turbidity water treatment (He et al 2020;Ma et al 2021;Saini et al 2021). Flocculation is an industrially applicable and financially feasible method owing to its relatively simple operation, low cost and low energy consumption (Teh et al 2016).…”