Biological treatment system using coconut waste as support media for treating grey water

Sabrina, Ummi (2011) Biological treatment system using coconut waste as support media for treating grey water. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

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Abstract

In Sarawak, rivers are an important source of potable water. Nowadays, a number of environmental issues have been encountered in relation to land used in Sarawak. The issue mainly concern of wastewater discharges and management. Direct discharge of wastewater and low performance wastewater treatment facilities leads to deterioration of river water quality. This matter not only spoils the valuable resources but also will lead to public health problem. This research was carried out to develop an individual wastewater treatment system in order to minimize the pollution from domestic wastewater into the rivers. Water quality trends of Sarawak River and its tributaries and wastewater characteristic were identified and studied at the beginning of the researchJ These preliminary results led to development of a biological wastewater treatment system with focus on domestic wastewater before discharge into the water inland. Since grey water is generated directly from every household and food outlets in just about equal volume every day, it presents a constant resource and it is quite a waste to be thrown away. Proper treatment of grey water at each individual premises is one way reduce point source of pollutant into the rivers. Such treatment facilities can also open up the potential for reuse of non-consumptive proposes. A prototype of Biological Domestic Wastewater Treatment System (BWTS) has been developed to determine its potential in treating grey water. The proposed system consists of five unit operations. They are feed tank, primary sedimentation tank, vertical fixed film bioreactor, secondary sedimentation tank and storage tank. A coconut waste was used as the support media in the bioreactor in order to minimize other sources of solid waste. The seed consortium was prepared by aerating actual wastewater for a few days until reasonable microbial growth population achieved (about 600nm optical density). The potential of the designed treatment system to treat domestic wastewater was evaluated based on its operating flow rates, concentration of wastewater, and volume of support media. Synthetic wastewater was used during evaluation. Treatment process using coconut fiber as support media in bioreactor showed significant removal of TSS (81.88%), TS (70.83%), COD (93.46%) and BOD (82.03%). The contribution of coir pith to TSS, TS, COD and BOD removal efficiencies reached 95.92%, 71.88%, 99.86%, and 57.14%, respectively. The removal percentages show that coconut waste has a capability to be a biofilter. This research also revealed that quality of effluent from the treatment system decreases as the operating flow rates and concentration of influent increase. While if the volume of support media inside bioreactor reduces, the effluent quality also drop off. Biological treatment system has been demonstrated capable to treat synthetic domestic wastewater. From the experimental results and observation, the Biological Domestic Wastewater Treatment System (BWTS) has a possibility to become an alternative in river water quality restoration. It also can achieve high possible environmental improvement for the least possible amount of physical and financial resources.

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