Effective wastewater treatment is a key factor in modern societies for the protection of the environment and human health. The need and search for alternative, sustainable wastewater treatment technologies has intensified. A treatment technology should not only be effective but also sustainable, i.e., with a low environmental footprint, an environmentally friendly character and cost-effective. Constructed Wetlands are considered as an alternative, green treatment technology, serving the decentralized/onsite approach of water treatment. They are engineered systems designed and constructed to utilize the natural processes involving the vegetation, substrate (soil, gravel), and their associated microbial communities to assist in treating wastewater. They are designed to take advantage of many of the same processes that occur in natural wetlands, but do so within a more controlled environment and under controlled conditions.
This book deals with the state-of-the-art applications of Constructed Wetland technology for industrial wastewater treatment. Constructed Wetlands are a relatively new technology for wastewater treatment, which has been developed over the last 20-30 years. During the last two decades, this treatment technology has attracted increasing interest as an alternative, ecological treatment technology which offers a series of economic, environmental and societal advantages. Its proven high effectiveness for the treatment of domestic and municipal wastewater acted as a trigger for the investigation of the system effectiveness in the treatment of more complex and heavily polluted wastewaters like industrial wastewaters. Constructed Wetlands have been used for the treatment of industrial wastewater mainly during the last two decades.
The book presents the current status and knowledge of the use of Constructed Wetlands in the industrial sector through case studies and review chapters. It coversthe wide range of applications of these sustainable systems for the treatment of wastewater from various industrial facilities, e.g., refinery effluents, paper mills, pharmaceuticals, textile industry, winery, brewery, hydrocarbons, agro-industries, meat processing, olive mills etc. It presents the system setup used for the various applications along with the overall effectiveness of this technology for these applications, through selected case studies from around the world. The book includes pilot-scale studies, experiments and field/full-scale applications in different countries for various types of industrial wastewaters. Also, a brief description of the technological setup used in various applications and the various removal/transformation processes of the different pollutants in these wastewaters is presented.
