ORGANIC, NITROGEN, AND PHOSPHORUS REMOVAL IN HOSPITAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT Hanny Vistanty, Rizal Awaludin Malik
Balai Besar Teknologi Pencegahan Pencemaran Industri
Abstract
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, hospital becomes the main and critical facility in any countries. Hospital admissions increased significantly as the number of infections increased. This phenomenon has also negatively affected the environment, as the wastewater discharged was also increased. Wastewater treatment plant in the hospital will also be affected as there will be fluctuations in respect of volume and quality of wastewater discharged. Hence there is an urgency to choose the appropriate technology as main solution and to improve existing wastewater treatment plant. In this paper, we will report the performance of integrated system of activated sludge and constructed wetlands applied in a hospital wastewater treatment plant. Both technologies was chosen because they are known as a simple, cheap, and highly effective technologies for wastewater treatment, especially low-strength wastewater. Activated sludge was able to reduce organic, ammonia, and phosphat content significantly. However the quality of effluent was still not able to meet the environmental requirements. The application of constructed wetlands as secondary and finishing treatment was able to further improve the quality of effluent to meet the required standard and resulted in BOD, COD, ammonia, and phosphate of 25 mg/L, 24.18 mg/L, <0.01 mg/L, and 0.46 mg/L, respectively. Hence it can be concluded that the integration of activated sludge and constructed wetlands can be an appropriate and effortless treatment system for low-strength wastewater to meet a strict quality standard.
