Constructed wetland for slaughterhouse wastewater treatment

Abstract

Water quality has become a burning issue as best quality water is needed for daily lives. The slaughterhouses functioning at Batticaloa district generate huge amount of effluent and discharge to surrounding environment without proper treatment. It pollutes the surface water and soil as well. Discharging slaughterhouse wastewater without treatment contributes to greatly degrading the aquatic environment as well as human health issues. Therefore, there is a need to treat slaughterhouse wastewater before discharging into the water bodies and soil to avoid environmental pollution and human health effects. The objectives of the study were to design, construct and evaluate the efficiency of constructed wetland for the treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater with special reference to the parameters of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total dissolved solid (TDS), total suspended solid (TSS), nitrate, phosphate, biological oxygen demand (BOD) and pH as well as to analyze the characteristics of slaughterhouse wastewater. The wetland was constructed with the layers of coir fiber, gravel and sand with the dimension of 1m x 1m x 0.3m. Cattail (Typha latifolia) plant was used as macrophytes. The results revealed that the removal of the above mentioned parameters increased with increasing retention time of wastewater in constructed wetland. The maximum removal efficiency of constructed wetland for the parameters of phosphate, COD, BOD5, nitrate, TDS and TSS nitrate and phosphate were 85.8%, 77.5%, 93.3%, 68%, 71.3% and 88.7% respectively. It was concluded that the constructed wetland performed well for the treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater for the parameters of COD, TSS, TDS, BOD5, nitrate and phosphate.