Enhancement of wastewater treatment plant effluent characteristics using polyethylene strips

Abstract

The disposal or reuse of treated wastewater needs to ensure the effluent quality to prevent the environmental problems especially with the variable inlet criteria. This leads to have a tertiary or additional treatment to the effluent of the secondary treatment which still till now is very expensive. This study try to use the polyethylene strips which is very cheap material, as a buffer media inside the effluent channel of WWTP to decrease the pollutants loads in it and achieve a control for the effluent quality to prevent its bad reflection on environment with low cost and easy control method. The study was applied on Abu Rawash WWTP effluent channel using the polyethylene strips that forming a biofilm layer above its surface. The removal ratio for one line of polyethylene strips for BOD and TSS was varied between 8.8 and 10.6% respectively. Also the results shown slightly difference between the concentrations of the BOD and TSS at the effluent of the wastewater treatment plant and after the media which mean that the BOD and TSS were removed using this kind of media.