Wetlands treating industrial wastewater

Research is underway at Bradford University, UK, on six pilot plant filter beds to develop design and management guidelines for operation of constructed wetlands for urban water contaminated with high levels of lead and copper. The identification of mathematical relationships between water quality and monitoring variables is essential for characterisation of control process within the biological filters and this is a focus of the study. The experimental design involves a row of filter buckets simulating wetland habitats and each filled with different packing orders of filter media. The experiment, operated as a tidal flow system for over a year, showed good overall performance of all filters in terms of lead, copper, five-day BOD and turbidity removal, however, suspended solids removal was low.