French Type Vertical Flow Constructed Wetland as a Sustainable Solution for Domestic Sewage Treatment

Abstract

In order to mitigate the risk posed by discharge of untreated wastewater and enhance the quality of wastewater prior to its release or reuse, it is important to adopt nature based treatment technologies. The current study was performed with objective to treat the primary treated sewage collected from a traditional Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR) based Sewage treatment plant (STP) by using a two-stage French Type Vertical Flow Constructed Wetland (FVFCW). This pilot-scale study was undertaken in Banaras Hindu University Campus Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. The wetland unit was a two-stage Vertical Flow Constructed Wetland system (VFCW) filled with two different filter media gravel & sand and planted with two different macrophytes Canna indica and Typha latifolia which was operated for Sustainable treatment of primary sewage. The VFCW was operated at three different Hydraulic loading rate (HLR) i.e. 1800, 2700, 3600 L/day for nine months. The VFCW performed for the treatment of different physicochemical parameters at given loading rates. The maximum removal efficiency of 72.37, 76.47, 100, 87.23, 41.41, 40.77 27.07% was recorded for COD, BOD, Turbidity, TSS, TDS, Phosphate and Ammonia respectively. Most of the Parameters showed maximum removal efficiency at HLR 2700 L/day. The study suggested that Experimental VFCW can be a sustainable solution for wastewater treatment in remote and rural areas of India as well small colonies due to its eco-friendly, cost-effective, low maintenance cost and lack of operational expertise. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.