Assessment of piggery wastewater treatment in vertical flow constructed wetlands: role of plants and aeration

ABSTRACT: Piggery wastewater (PWW), rich in pollutants, poses significant environmental risks if not properly treated. Natural treatment processes, such as constructed wetlands (combined action of plants, substrates, and microbes) and microalgae cultivation, offer sustainable and low-cost alternatives for managing these effluents while enabling resource recovery. This study represents an initial step toward optimizing key operational conditions, such as aeration (passive and active), vegetation presence, and the use of single or sequential Vertical Flow Constructed Wetlands (VFCWs), for the treatment of piggery wastewater, using different experimental setups, at a laboratory scale. Indoor experiments were conducted over an 8-week period to optimize operational conditions for the treatment of PWW. The VFCWs, arranged in two stages and operated in series through gravity flow, were fed daily and monitored weekly. The best removal rates of total Kjeldahl nitrogen (42.9 %), ammoniacal nitrogen (50.3 %), and chemical oxygen demand (20.5 %), were observed in the second stage of VFCW without aeration and with plant. Nitrate and phosphorus levels increased during the experiment, likely due to microbial activity within the substrate and plant root zones. The final goal is to treat the piggery wastewater from a rural farm in India, produce electricity (by a Microbial Fuel Cell), to generate an effluent suitable for microalgae cultivation, with the produced biomass intended for use either as a biostimulant to enhance cereal crops included in pig diets or as a direct nutritional supplement in pig feed.

Keywords

Piggery effluent Wastewater treatment Nitrogen Phosphate

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.9/6168

Citation

Corrêa, D.O., Ferreira, A., Ribeiro, B., Gogoi, J., Karan N., Nalwad, A., Ganguly, A., Mutnuri, S., & Gouveia, L. (2025). Assessment of piggery wastewater treatment using different vertical flow constructed wetlands setups: effects of plant and aeration. In: Journal of Water Process Engineering, 2025, vol. 80, article 109168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwpe.2025.109168