Investigating the performance of a laboratory-scale ecological system to treat dairy wastewater

The potential for an ecologically engineered treatment system to improve water quality is supported by the effective treatment of wastewater by existing systems such as Living Machines and treatment wetlands. This article describes these treatment systems and their application for waste treatment and presents preliminary results of a laboratory-scale system to treat dairy wastewater. This study used an ecological treatment system, similar to a Living Machine, consisting of five 230 L tanks, that included an anaerobic tank, two aerobic tanks, a calarifier, an aquaculture tank, and a 115 L wetland mesocosm. The preliminary results demonstrate the potential for this technology to be used in the treatment of dairy wastwater following further research and modifications. Approximately 80% of the solids added were removed in the first three tanks. Reductions in TN and TKN were as great as 90% and 94%, respectively. The reductions in NH4-N were consistently greater than 99%, and as much a 32.3% of the NO3-N was removed. A limited amount of PO4-P was removed by the system, only 28.2% over 168 h of treatment. Qualitative results demonstrated the potential of these systems to utilize waste inputs to produce value-added products