Green walls to treat kitchen greywater in urban areas: Performance from a pilot-scale experiment

An increase in water use in urban areas is forcing scientists and policy makers to find alternative solutions for freshwater management, aimed at attaining integrated water resources management. Here, we tested in a 2 year experiment (June 2017–April 2019) the treatment performance of an innovative wall cascade constructed wetland (WCCW) system. The aimwas to combine themultifunctional benefits of greenwalls (e.g. aesthetic, surface area requirements) with those of constructed wetland systems (e.g. high pollutants removal efficiencies, water recycling) to treat kitchen greywaters. The WCCW was a terraced system of six phytoremediation lines, each ofwhichwas composed of three plastic tanks (3 × 0.04m3), filled with lightweight porousmedia, and vegetated with different ornamental species, namely Mentha aquatica L., Oenanthe javanica (Blume) DC., and Lysimachia nummularia L. Physicochemical (temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity) and chemical parameters (chemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand, anionic surfactants, Kjeldahl, ammoniumand nitric nitrogen, total orthophosphate)weremonitored at a frequency of at least 15 days, depending on the season andWCCWmanagement. Results showed that theWCCWsignificantly reduced the mainwater pollutants (e.g. organic compounds, nutrients), suggesting its potential application in urban environments for water recycling in the context of green infrastructures and ecological sanitation. A culture-independent taxonomic assessment of suspended bacterial communities before and after the treatment showed clear treatment-related shifts, being the functional ecology attributes changed according to changes in greywater chemical parameters. Future research should attempt to optimize theWCCWsystemmanagement by regulating the nutrients balance to avoidmacronutrients deficiency, and setting themost suitablewater flowdynamics (hydraulic retention time, saturation-desaturation cycles) to improve the greywater treatment

• Autores: Dal Ferro, Nicola; De Mattia, Chiara; Maucieri, Carmelo; Stevanato, Piergiorgio; Squartini, Andrea; Borin, Maurizio; Gandini Ayerbe, Mario Andrés
• Tipo de recurso: Article of journal
• Fecha de publicación: 2021
• Institución: Universidad Autónoma de Occidente
• Repositorio: RED: Repositorio Educativo Digital UAO
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:red.uao.edu.co:10614/13924
• Acceso en línea: https://hdl.handle.net/10614/13924; https://red.uao.edu.co/
• Palabra clave: Calidad del agua; Water quality; Constructed wetlands; Green infrastructures; Microbial analysis; NGS sequencing; Nutrients; Urban areas
• Rights: openAccess
• License: Derechos reservados - Elsevier, 2021