The effectiveness of a fabricated bio-filtration system in treating the domestic greywater

• Main Author: Winnie, Anak Renang
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2017
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25732/1/The%20effectiveness%20of%20a%20fabricated%2024pgs.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25732/4/Winnie%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25732/
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

In many developing countries, domestic wastewater are often discharged without treatment and amongst the various causes of water pollution, the domestic greywater remains as the large contributor of organic pollution in the river. Considering the significant role of river as the main source of freshwater, the level of river pollution needs to be minimized by treating the domestic wastewater, specifically the greywater from the residential areas prior to its release into the drains and rivers. The high cost of installation of many available treatment techniques to control the environment pollution can burden the society especially those from low-income families. Considering the need of domestic wastewater pre-treatment and the economic burden to install the current technology, it is hence necessary to develop a more cost effective wastewater treatment system. Utilizing agriculture waste as a bio-filter media for domestic greywater treatment is an important option to reduce the cost of wastewater treatment system and the accumulation of agricultural waste. Hence, this study will focus on the performance of the agricultural waste such as coconut coir and rice husks as low cost packing media and biofilm material carrier for domestic greywater treatment. The performance of coconut coir and rice husks as packing media in terms of their removal efficiency are evaluated based on several parameters such as turbidity, TSS, COD and BOD5. Based on the results, coconut coir has better performance than rice husks as packing media in treating the domestic greywater. The removal efficiency achieved by coconut coir packing media in terms of turbidity, TSS, COD and BOD5 removal from wastewater samples was 63.09%, 49.7%, 38.19% and 43.93% respectively, while the removal efficiency achieved by rice husks was 57.79%, 49.06%, 34.85% and 42.42% respectively. The sufficient amount of dissolved oxygen is important to sustain the aerobic biological action in the system. The performance of each aeration system proposed in treating the wastewater is analysed. The removal efficiency of turbidity, TSS, COD and BOD5 achieved by coconut coir with the small opening at the inlet pipe as the source of oxygen was 36.65%, 23.08%, 12.36% and 23.29% respectively.