Treatment of waste stabilization pond effluent using natural zeolite for irrigation potential

Kulyash Meiramkulova, Timoth Mkilima, Aliya Kydyrbekova, Elmira Bukenova, Abdilda Meirbekov, Gulnur Saspugayeva, Gulmira Adilbekkizi Adilbektegi, Kulzhan Beisembayeva, Gaukhar Tazhkenova

2022

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0259614
Data confidence 70 medium
How this score is calculated

It is built from checkable properties of the record itself: whether the article has a DOI, how many independent sources confirmed its data, whether the required fields are filled in, and how recent the latest confirmation is. Disagreement between sources and a missing identifier lower it. A value of 80 or above means the record was published without further checking; 60 to 79 means it is published at reduced confidence, with a manual check advisable. A record verified by an editor by hand is never pushed below 90 by a recalculation. This scores our data about the article, not the article itself.

Abstract

Direct utilization of treated effluent from natural treatment systems for irrigation can be challenging on sensitive plants due to high levels of salinity. Post-treatment of such an effluent prior to its applicability in irrigation can be of significant importance. In this study, the wastewater from a natural treatment plant was treated using a lab-scale filtration system with zeolite as a filter material. Three different column depths (0.5 m, 0.75 m, and 1 m) were used to investigate the effect of column depth on the treatment efficiency of the media. The suitability of the raw wastewater and the treated effluent from each column for irrigation purposes was investigated. The water quality parameters investigated were; electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), sodium (Na+), calcium (Ca2+), and magnesium (Mg2+). From the analysis results, it was observed that the column depth had a significant influence on the removal efficiency of the pollutants. The highest removal efficiency (94.58%) was achieved from the combination of electrical conductivity and 1 m column depth, while the lowest removal efficiency (10.05%) was observed from the combination of calcium and 0.5 m column depth. The raw wastewater fell mostly into a "very high" hazard, which is class four (C4) based on electrical conductivity and class four (S4) based sodium adsorption ratio; making it unsuitable for irrigation purposes. However, when the wastewater was subjected to 1 m column depth, the quality of the treated effluent improved significantly which in turn also improved the suitability of the effluent for irrigation purposes, with percent compliance ranging from 20.19% to 97.54%.