Water quality effluent treatment using macro-composite technology at a residential flat area: hydraulic retention time effects

Most of the causes of river pollution are due to the impact of human activities through the development of new construction projects, agriculture, industry and others. As an alternative to deal with this problem, macro-composite has been used as a pretreatment process to treat waste-water before discharge into the river. Therefore, this study aims to characterize the water quality of the effluent and to investigate the treatment efficiency of different hydraulic retention times (HRTs) using macro-composite technology in treating the effluent from Flat Taman Jaya. The parameters tested were chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand, ammo-nia nitrogen (NH₃ –N), pH, total suspended solid (TSS), turbidity and total phosphate (TP). The efficacy of the macro-composites was tested by immersing 70% of the macro-composites into the 750 mL wastewater sample for five different periods. The results of each wastewater sample were measured after 2 d of treatment. The results showed that the most efficient treatment was achieved with the macro-composite at 3 d HRT with COD, NH₃ –N, TSS, turbidity and TP removal of 80%, 97%, 60%, 49% and 89%, respectively, at pH 7.33.