Performance of a reed bed system for faecal wastewater treatment: Case study

Abstract

Reed bed systems (RBS) have potential to treat wastewater, and being interested in such green wastewater infra-structures, an RBS has been installed for the first time in Bangladesh to treat faecal wastewater, which comes from a low-cost community latrine at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar area. An anaerobic baffle reactor was set followed by the RBS, which was operated continuously for four months at five different retention times (3–7 days). The RBS was found to retain, on average, about 92% of 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) and chemical oxygen demand (COD), 69% of PO34 and 52% of NO3 . Importantly, the effluent concentration met the national environmental standard for all except for PO34 . Thus the optimum hydraulic retention time in RBS has been selected to be 3 days when the PO34 ion has been reduced at maximum rate. High positive correlation (p > 0:9) was observed between PO34and NO3 concentrations in effluent water as well. The results of this study, thus, partly support the RBS as an effective green solution for faecal wastewater treatment.