Experimental Study of Wastewater Treatment by Reed Bed System using Plants

As global water resources decline, reuse of domestic grey water for the irrigation of home gardens is quickly becoming widespread in many parts of the world. Nowadays treatment plants are costly, need high trained man power and high electricity. Alternatively for those cost expensive treatments, we are choosing reed bed wastewater treatment system. Reed bed process-a recent techniques can be used for treatment of wastewater. This system seems to be one of the potential solutions in discharging the huge amount of waste. The main aim of the project was treatment of wastewater through vertical subsurface flow constructed wetland and compare the efficiency of two different plants. The pilot scale model of vertical subsurface flow constructed wetland. Sand and gravels were used as bed media and plants used for experiment were Canna Indica and Phragmites Austrails. In this paper, we are evaluated performance of Pharagmites Austrails and Canna Indica in subsurface flow systems for removal percentage of pollutants such as Chemical oxygen demand (COD), Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), Turbidity, pH, Total suspended solids (TSS), Total dissolved solids (TDS), phosphrous and ammonia nitrogen. It has to be noted that growing reed does not require cultivable land. Hence waste and uncultivable land can be used for this whole process. The process is eco-friendly without use of chemicals, special equipments, electricity and also with zero operational and maintenance cost.