As part of the cultural season of the Environmental Research Center

assistant lecturer Muwafaq Hussein Mohammed-lecturer in the Department of Environmental Pollution-ERC presented a lecture on Tuesday, 24/12/2019 at 12:00 entitled “Floating Treatment Wetlands-New Technology for Wastewater Treatment”.

The lecturer stated that constructed wetlands (CWs), in the recent decades, are being increasingly used for water quality improvement during wastewater treatment. This is, in part, a result of increasingly strict water quality standards which mean that conventional secondary treatment may not be sufficient to comply with targets in receiving waters. CWs are engineered ecosystems that exploit different natural remediation mechanisms from biotic and abiotic components for water quality improvement. These systems have been created with different designs, including free water surface constructed wetlands (FWS CWs) and subsurface flow constructed wetlands (SSF CWs). These wetlands have been used worldwide as a tertiary polishing stage during wastewater treatment, and their performance in removing nitrogen were evaluated. One advantage of FWS CWs is that they are inexpensive to operate and maintain. However, inadequate surface area for microbial growth for a given volume and the lack of direct contact between water column and plant roots are deemed critical limitations in their performance for removing nitrogen.

To overcome these limitations, one possible solution is the floating wetland technology. Floating treatment wetland (FTW) is an eco-engineered system, that integrates the functions of the FWS CW and floating treatment island for water quality improvement. Increasing decontamination surface areas and direct contact with contaminants as well as harnessing range of biogeochemical processes such as microbial transformations, plant uptake, and physical filteration to eliminate contaminants are the central mechanisms of applying FTWs. FTW has, therefore, been developed as an lternative and effective wetland design for sewage-industrial wastewater quality improvement. 

As part of the cultural season of the Environmental Research Center

Dr. Mukheled Amer Hussien-lecturer in the Department of Environmental Pollution-ERC presented a lecture on Tuesday, 31/12/2019 at 12:00 entitled “Integrated Technology consisting of Advanced Oxidation Process and Membrane Separation Process for the Treatment of Industrial Wastewater”. The lecturer stated that there are many chemical organic pollutants in the industrial wastewater effluents that have a high ability to resist the conventional wastewater treatment processes like (biological wastewater treatment- the most environmentally friendly and cheapest method) and thus, these pollutants can flow through those streams to be discharged into the environment. As a consequence, the environmental concern has been risen. Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) as essential solution for this problem where they produce free hydroxyl radicals having a high oxidation potential to oxidize (degrade) the refractory organic pollutants either partially to form short-chain acids that are amenable to biological treatment or totally to CO₂, H₂O and inorganic ions as final compounds. In real applications, there are many advanced oxidation processes which each of them having advantages and disadvantages in performance. Generally, the performance of these processes can be improved when connected with membrane separation processes to produce the integrated technologies where these technologies are able to improve the quality of wastewater effluent to be in agreement with environmental standards. 

An integrated technology consisting of heterogenous and homogeneous photocatalysis with membrane separation process was selected as a case study to oxidize (degrade) a selected industrial model like polyethylene glycol-a common pollutant in conventional wastewater effluent streams into the environment due to several industrial applications like food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, lubricants, antifreeze and etc. Experimental results of this technology proved that this pollutant was primarily degraded to different types of short-chain acids that can be used later due to their economic considerations or biologically treated.