Treatment of Craft Brewery Sewage with SS VF and FWS Constructed Wetland – Lab Scale Experiment
Wojciech Dąbrowski, Beata Karolinczak, Paweł Malinowski, Lech Magrel
The problem of wastewater treatment from craft breweries emerged in Poland about 10 years ago when an increase in the number of small breweries was observed. Plants located in small towns are forced to solve the problem on their own. One of the possibilities is to use low-cost technology of constructed wetlands with subsurface and surface flow. The purpose of the research was to test the possibility of effective treatment of sewage from a craft brewery in a lab-scale research installation and to determine the parameters for designing a real scale plant. Wastewater from the Waszczukowe brewery was used in the study. The research system consisted of a retention and aeration tank, SS-VF subsurface flow and FWS surface flow beds. An innovative Certyd filling produced by LSA company was used. The high efficiency of SS-VF bed and the entire research system was found. The removal efficiency in SS VF was on average 89.7% for BOD5, 90.5% for COD, 54.6% for TN and 52.1% for TP. For whole treatment it was respectively 97.1%, 96.7%, 72.6% and 61.3%. A high organic matter removal effect was found for the SS-VF bed (87.1 g BOD5 m-2 d-1) and a relatively low for the FWS (3.0 BOD5 g m-2 d-1). The study confirmed the need for plant design based on hydraulic load and required load removed per unit area.