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Differences in the treatment efficiency of a cold-resistant floating bed plant receiving two types of low-pollution wastewater

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Abstract

A floating bed system vegetated with Oenanthe javanica was adopted in this study to treat two types of low-pollution wastewater (LPW): polluted river water (PRW) and treated domestic wastewater (DW). The water was treated for 111 days during the low-temperature season. The results indicated that the total nitrogen (TN) removal rates were higher in the DW groups than in the PRW groups during the initial 30 days. This difference may stem from the different C/N ratio of the influent. As the water temperature rose above 15.5 °C after March 12, the purification capability of nitrogen in the DW groups was enhanced, and the removal rates of TN were 89.8 and 76.8 % in DW and the control 2 at 111 days. Conversely, the performance of total phosphorus (TP) removal was robust during the initial stage of the experiment, despite receiving domestic wastewater with a relatively high N/P ratio (16:1). The TP removal rates in DW were as high as 91.5 % compared to 78.9 % in PRW at 30 days. At the same time, the N/P ratios of plant tissue were higher in the DW groups compared to that in the PRW groups. Plant uptake played a significant role in nutrient removal in the PRW groups (52.5 % for TN, 68.2 % for TP), followed by sedimentation. In contrast, plant uptake only accounted for 25.3 % of TN removal and 24.1 % of TP removal in DW. The results provide engineering parameters for the future design of an ecological remediation technology for LPW purification.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Jiangsu Agriculture Science and Technology Innovation Fund (No. CX(14)2050), the Major Science and Technology Project of Water Pollution Control and Management in China (No. 2012ZX07101-004), the Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture (No. Y412201428), and the National Natural Science Funds of China (Grant No. 41501324).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing, 210014, China

    Jingjing Duan, Yanfang Feng, Yingliang Yu, Shiying He, Lihong Xue & Linzhang Yang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Yanfang Feng

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  1. Jingjing Duan
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  2. Yanfang Feng
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Correspondence to Linzhang Yang.

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Duan, J., Feng, Y., Yu, Y. et al. Differences in the treatment efficiency of a cold-resistant floating bed plant receiving two types of low-pollution wastewater. Environ Monit Assess 188, 283 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5286-3

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