Study on Treatment of Electroplating Wastewater Using Constructed Wetland

Electroplating waste with very high concentration of metals and COD has always been posing a great challenge for treatment in an environmental-friendly way. The present study attempts at use of constructed wetland in treating electroplating waste. Three types of wetland setups were used in the study, namely: single wetland cell, two-wetland cells in cascade and single wetland cell with adsorbent bed for varying hydraulic detention times (2 days, 4 days and 6 days) in batch mode. The percentage removal of all metals was found to be more than 80%. The effect of varying detention time was not found to improve the removal efficiency in all the three cells varying modes of treatment, thus indicating 2 days to be optimum detention time. The mode of set-up of the wetland cells (i.e., with cascading and with augmented adsorbents) was not found to be statistically significant compared to treatment using single-isolated wetland cell unit, based on ANOVA test for two-factors, i.e., chemical speciation and wetland cell-setup types.