Low-Cost Technology for the Purification of Wastewater Contaminated with Pathogenic Bacteria and Heavy Metals
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Low-Cost Technology for the Purification of Wastewater Contaminated with Pathogenic Bacteria and Heavy Metals Mohammed T. M. Hussien & Mohamed Azab El-Liethy & Akebe Luther King Abia & Mohammed A. Dakhil
Received: 16 March 2020 / Accepted: 13 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Water scarcity has continuously increased over the last decades in countries like Egypt, where agriculture consume > 85% of the country’s water. Increased urbanization, industries, and expensive advanced treatment processes further aggravate this challenge, causing the use of poorly treated or untreated
M. T. M. Hussien Central Laboratory for Environmental Quality Monitoring (CLEQM), National Water Research Center (NWRC), Fum Ismailiya Canal, P. O. Box 74, Shoubra El-Kheima 13411, Egypt M. A. El-Liethy (*) Environmental Microbiology Laboratory, Water Pollution Research Department, National Research Centre, P.O. Box 12622, Dokki, Giza, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] A. L. K. Abia (*) Antimicrobial Research Unit, College of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, X54001, Durban, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] M. A. Dakhil Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, Helwan University, Cairo 11790, Egypt M. A. Dakhil CAS Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration Biodiversity Conservation, Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, People’s Republic of China M. A. Dakhil University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, People’s Republic of China
wastewater for crop irrigation. The current study investigated an eco-friendly technology consisting of a constructed wetland planted with Typha latifolia and Cyperus papyrus, with a zeolite substrate for water purification. In the unit containing T. latifolia, the removal efficiency of biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), and ammonia was 68.5%, 71%, 70%, and 82.3% when hydraulic retention time (HRT) was increased from day 1 to 3, respectively. In the unit planted with C. papyrus, the removal efficiency of COD, BOD, TSS, and ammonia was 85.5%, 86.2%, 83.9%, and 92.3% with an increase in HRT from day 1 to 3, respectively. Also, the microbial load was reduced by 99.9%, and complete removal of Salmonella sp. was achieved after 3 days with C. papyrus; with T. latifolia, the removal was 42.8–57.5%. Box–Behnken design was used to optimize the independent factors, including the initial concentration of metals (15 to 45 mg/L) and contact time (24 to 72 h). The removal efficiency of Cu and Zn was 93.4% and 94% at the optimum contact time (72 h), with 16 plant stems and 15 mg/L initial metal concentration. Overall, water from this simple-design and cost-efficient wastewater treatment technology could be reused for agricultural purposes without posing any health threats. This is particularly true with C. papyrus.
Keywords Constructed wetland . Pathogenic bacteria .
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