Treatment of Mixture of Sewage and Partially Treated Swine Wastewater by a Combination of UASB and Constructed Wetlands

Abstract

A system with a combination of upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor and constructed wetlands (CWs) has not yet been applied to river water polluted by both sewage and swine wastewater. In this study, a pilot system with a UASB reactor combined with two CW reactors was used to evaluate the feasibility of treating wastewater samples (mixture of sewage and partially treated swine wastewater). To observe the influence of hydraulic retention time (HRT) on the removal efficiency of various pollutants in the wastewater in the UASB reactor, two phases of experiments with HRTs of 6 and 2 h were conducted. The overall system performances between the two phases of experiments did not show obvious differences. The UASB reactor responded well in removing most of the pollutants observed except for ammonia nitrogen (AN) and total phosphorus (TP). The average removal efficiency could reach the levels of 93, 91, 86, 89, and 78% for suspended solids,