Treatment of artificial wastewater containing two azo textile dyes by vertical-flow constructed wetlands

The release of untreated dye textile wastewater into receiving streams is unacceptable not only for aesthetic reasons and its negative impacts on aquatic life but also because numerous dyes are toxic and carcinogenic to humans. Strategies, as of now, used for treating textile wastewaters have technical and economical restrictions. The greater part of the physico-chemical methods, which are used to treat this kind of wastewater, are costly, produce large amounts of sludge and are wasteful concerning some soluble dyes. In contrast, biological treatments such as constructed wetlands are cheaper than the traditional methods, environmental friendly and do not produce large amounts of sludge. Synthetic wastewater containing Acid Blue 113 (AB113) and Basic Red 46 (BR46) has been added to laboratory-scale vertical-flow construction wetland systems, which have been planted with Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. (common reed). The concentrations 7 and 208 mg/l were applied for each dye at the hydraulic contact times of 48 and 96 h. Concerning the low concentrations of BR46 and AB113, the unplanted wetlands are associated with significant (ρ < 0.05) reduction performances, if compared with planted wetlands concerning the removal of dyes. For the high concentrations of AB113, BR46 and a mixture of both of them, wetlands with long contact times were significantly (ρ < 0.05) better than wetlands that had short contact times in terms of dye, colour and chemical oxygen demand reductions. Regarding nitrate nitrogen (NO(3)-N), the reduction percentage rates of AB113, BR46 and a mixture dye of both of them were between 85 and 100%. For low and high inflow dye concentrations, best removals were generally recorded for spring and summer, respectively. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11356-017-0992-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.