PJB-2019-666
DEVELOPMENT OF DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR DESIGNING AN EFFICIENT WETLAND TECHNOLOGY USING EXPERIMENTAL AND MODELING APPROACH
SYED TANVIR ARSHAD SAADI
Abstract
ABSTRACT Pakistan, the 5th most populous state in the world, is facing the most horrible disasters of water scarcity for the last many years. In the absence of non-availability of good quality water, wastewater is directly used for agriculture without secondary and tertiary treatments which is affecting the soil, plant and human health negatively. In this study a new technique namely wetland technology is used, for the biological treatments of wastewater by using aquatic plants that absorb the metals and create anaerobic conditions to eliminate the pathogens, and recommended the use of treated wastewater for irrigation purpose. In a prototype experiment, different effluents were treated and their optimal hydraulic retention time (HRT) was found for obtaining good quality water for irrigation purpose and a comparison was made between predicted and observed values after using a modeling approach. Experimental design selected for the study was Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three treatments and every treatment had three replications. Water lettuce, duckweed and pennywort were the aquatic plants used for treatment of wastewater. The wastewater quality before and after treatment was analyzed for selected parameters such as Electrical Conductivity (EC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Sodium (Na) and heavy metals including Iron (Fe), Copper (Cu), Nickle (Ni) and Lead (Pb). Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR) was also calculated on the basis of results of Ca, Mg and Na. Results showed the range of percentage reduction efficiency of EC, Ca, Mg, Na and heavy metals 3-26%, 6-36%, 0-31%, 0-3%, 0-92%, 12-75% and 4-35%, respectively. The statistical analysis showed that all treatments have significant results. On the basis of this study, a decision support system (DSS) was developed to find out the most efficient design of a CW for the treatment of various types of wastewater. Policy guidelines were established for the safe reuse of wastewater for irrigation purpose with the help of DSS Key Words: Wastewater, Constructed Wetland (CW), Decision Support System (DSS), Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD)
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