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Study on the purification effect of aeration-enhanced horizontal subsurface-flow constructed wetland on polluted urban river water

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Abstract

The issue of urban river pollution has attracted great attention due to high concentrations of ammonia nitrogen (NH4+-N) and low concentrations of dissolved oxygen (DO) in polluted water bodies. In order to investigate the effects of aeration-enhanced horizontal subsurface-flow constructed wetlands on polluted river water, unaerated aeration (NA), continuous aeration (CA), and intermittent aeration (IA) constructed wetlands were established. The purification effects of the wetland on various pollutants and the form of effluent nitrogen, influences of temperature on the removal rates of pollutants, the change of redox potential—oxidation reduction potential (ORP)—and the difference of dissolved oxygen (DO) between influent and effluent were investigated. The results indicated that aeration enhancement can improve the purification efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and NH4+-N in constructed wetlands. The purification efficiencies of TN in IA and CA constructed wetlands were 91.9% and 53.7%, respectively, indicating that IA is the optimized aeration method for removal of various pollutants in wetlands. Changes of DO and ORP in effluent under IA and CA suggested improvement of aeration on the water environment. Meanwhile, DO was more sensitive to temperature compared with ORP. Additionally, a study of the nitrogen content in effluent suggested that the aeration method had a significant influence on the nitrogen content in effluent. The removal rates of both NH4+-N and TN degraded as the temperature dropped. The results also demonstrated that the removal rate of NH4+-N under aeration condition was more sensitive to temperature than that under NA condition and the effect of temperature on the removal rate of NH4+-N was greater than that of TN.

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Funding

We greatly acknowledged the financial support from the Sichuan Provincial Department of Education (No. 2017SZ0177) and the State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection (SKLGP2016Z008).

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Author notes

  1. Guo Liu and Tianyu He contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, People’s Republic of China

    Guo Liu, Tianyu He, Yanhui Liu, Qinqin Huang, Zhihao Xie, Lishan Wu & Jing Liu

  2. College of Environment and Ecology, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, People’s Republic of China

    Guo Liu, Tianyu He, Zhengyang Chen, Zhihao Xie, Lishan Wu & Jing Liu

  3. College of Environment and Civil Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, People’s Republic of China

    Yanhui Liu, Lijuan Li & Qinqin Huang

  4. Chengdu environmental group Chengdu tap water Co., Ltd., Chengdu, 610000, People’s Republic of China

    Zhengyang Chen

  5. Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610059, People’s Republic of China

    Yifei Xie

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  1. Guo Liu
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Correspondence to Jing Liu.

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Liu, G., He, T., Liu, Y. et al. Study on the purification effect of aeration-enhanced horizontal subsurface-flow constructed wetland on polluted urban river water. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 12867–12880 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-04832-9

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