The use of constructed wetlands for water treatment of swimming and fishing ponds is becoming increasingly important as a sustainable and environmental friendly technology (VMM, 2001). Furthermore, these constructed wetlands can be applied for the individual treatment of domestic wastewater. This is important in Flanders (northern Belgium), where an estimated 15% of the population will never be connected to a central wastewater treatment plant (Vandaele et al., 2000).
Advantages of constructed wetlands over more traditional chemical techniques of water treatment are, among others, (1) robustness against varying loads and ambient conditions and (2) maintenance friendly, chemical-free, low-cost and stable operation (VMM, 2005). For example, the use of chlorine as disinfectant is not needed when using constructed wetlands for water treatment. Consequently, the risk of skin diseases, allergies and, eventually, cancer can be largely reduced.
However, the performance of constructed wetlands may be impaired due to sludge accumulation and/or clogging after a certain time of operation (Rousseau et al., 2004). The aim of this project is to unravel the processes entailing this loss of performance in constructed wetlands. As such, the study consists of two main parts: (1) analysis and evaluation of the construction and operation of a clogged constructed wetland and (2) optimisation of the constructed wetland based on experiments with a lab-scale constructed wetland.


Auteur: Drouillon, M. & Van Hulle, S.W.H.
Herkomst: Proceedings International Symposium on Wetland Pollutant Dynamics and Control. Gent, Belgium. September 4-8, 2005, 238-239