Treatment of waste stabilization pond effluent using natural zeolite for irrigation potential

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 3;17(6):e0259614. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259614. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Direct utilization of treated effluent from natural treatment systems for irrigation can be challenging on sensitive plants due to high levels of salinity. Post-treatment of such an effluent prior to its applicability in irrigation can be of significant importance. In this study, the wastewater from a natural treatment plant was treated using a lab-scale filtration system with zeolite as a filter material. Three different column depths (0.5 m, 0.75 m, and 1 m) were used to investigate the effect of column depth on the treatment efficiency of the media. The suitability of the raw wastewater and the treated effluent from each column for irrigation purposes was investigated. The water quality parameters investigated were; electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), sodium (Na+), calcium (Ca2+), and magnesium (Mg2+). From the analysis results, it was observed that the column depth had a significant influence on the removal efficiency of the pollutants. The highest removal efficiency (94.58%) was achieved from the combination of electrical conductivity and 1 m column depth, while the lowest removal efficiency (10.05%) was observed from the combination of calcium and 0.5 m column depth. The raw wastewater fell mostly into a "very high" hazard, which is class four (C4) based on electrical conductivity and class four (S4) based sodium adsorption ratio; making it unsuitable for irrigation purposes. However, when the wastewater was subjected to 1 m column depth, the quality of the treated effluent improved significantly which in turn also improved the suitability of the effluent for irrigation purposes, with percent compliance ranging from 20.19% to 97.54%.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Calcium / analysis
  • Ponds / analysis
  • Sodium / analysis
  • Waste Disposal, Fluid / methods
  • Wastewater* / analysis
  • Zeolites*

Substances

  • Waste Water
  • Zeolites
  • Sodium
  • Calcium

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Ministry of Education and Science, the Republic of Kazakhstan to support “Reducing the technogenic impact on water resources with using water recycling tech-nology”, № BR05236844 /215 for 2018- 2020 years. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.