Improvement of Domestic Wastewater Treated Effluent from Sequencing Batch Reactor Using Slow Sand Filtration

Abstract

The effluent quality improvement being discharged from wastewater treatment plants is essential to maintain an environment and healthy water resources. This study was carried out to evaluate the possibility of intermittent slow sand filtration as a promising tertiary treatment method for the sequencing batch reactor (SBR) effluent. Laboratory scale slow sand filter (SSF) of 1.5 UC and 0.1 m/h filtration rate, was used to study the process performance. It was found that SSF IS very efficient in oxidizing organic matter with COD removal efficiency up to 95%, also it is capable of removing considerable amounts of phosphate with 76% and turbidity with 87% removal efficiencies. Slow sand filter efficiently reduced the mass of suspended and dissolved material to a very high TSS and conductivity removal efficiency of about 99% for both of them. Therefore, it can be said that slow sand filtration would be a promising technology as a tertiary treatment of SBR reactor effluent, and economically achievable as a mean of upgrading wastewater effluents to meet more stringent water quality standards, where treated effluent can be reused for various recreational purposes i.e. gardening and irrigation, as well as for safe discharge.