Performance Evaluation of a Floating Treatment Wetland in an Urban Catchment

Peter Nichols; Terry Lucke; Darren Drapper; Christopher Walker

doi:10.3390/w8060244

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Performance Evaluation of a Floating Treatment Wetland in an Urban Catchment

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Performance Evaluation of a Floating Treatment Wetland in an Urban Catchment

Peter Nichols, Terry Lucke, Darren Drapper and Christopher Walker

Water, Vol.8(6), 244

2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/w8060244

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Abstract

floating treatment wetland

stormwater pollution

urban stormwater

Floating Treatment Wetland (FTW) systems are purpose-built devices designed to replicate the water treatment processes that occur in and around naturally occurring floating vegetated islands. FTWs can be used to improve the water quality of water storage ponds by contributing to water treatment processes through adhesion, filtration, nutrient uptake (direct use by plants), and sequestration. This paper presents the results of a twelve-month investigation into the pollution removal performance of a FTW receiving stormwater runoff from a 7.46 ha urban residential catchment. As anticipated, there was a high degree of variation in FTW treatment performance between individual rainfall events. Overall pollution removal performance was calculated to be 80% for Total Suspended Solids (TSS), 53% for Total Phosphorous (TP), and 17% for Total Nitrogen (TN) for a FTW footprint of 0.14% of the contributing catchment. TSS and TP concentrations were found to be significantly reduced after FTW treatment. The minimum FTW footprint to catchment size ratio required to achieve regulated nutrient removal rates was calculated to be 0.37%. Sum of loads calculations based on flow resulted in pollution load reductions of TSS 76%, TP 55%, and TN 17%. Pollution treatment performance (particularly for TN) was found to be affected by low influent concentrations, and highly-variable inflow concentrations. The study demonstrated that FTWs are an effective treatment solution for the removal of pollution from urban stormwater runoff.

Details

Title: Performance Evaluation of a Floating Treatment Wetland in an Urban Catchment
Authors: Peter Nichols (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering
Terry Lucke (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering
Darren Drapper (Author) - Drapper Environmental Consultants (DEC)
Christopher Walker (Author) - Covey Associates Pty Ltd
Publication details: Water, Vol.8(6), 244; 8
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2016
DOI: 10.3390/w8060244
ISSN: 2073-4441
Copyright note: Copyright © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Organisation Unit: Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering; School of Science and Engineering - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99449478902621
Output Type: Journal article

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