Evaluation of Wastewater Treatment Efficiency Utilizing Coconut Fiber as Filter Media
    1. Master of UWE, Graduate School, Institute of Technology of Cambodia, Russian Federation Blvd., P.O. Box 86, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Received: March 17,2021 / Revised: Accepted: March 18,2021 / Published: June 29,2021

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 The advanced technology for the wastewater treatment process is still limited in Cambodia especially for small-medium enterprises (SME) that are facing their profit margin. The system which used coconut fiber as filter media (CFFM) was developed for wastewater treatment in this study and the influent wastewater was characterized before treatment. The aim of this study is overall to estimate the efficiency of CFFM with various media ratios of coconut fiber and HRTs for wastewater pollutant reduction. Two reactor tanks were designed with 14cm3 volumes and complied with low media ratio (LMR V/V=15%) and high media ratio (HMR V/V =30%). All parameters were measured after treated 24 hours, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks called Phase -1, and the process was repeated in Phase-2 with the old media from Phase-1. Nutrient compositions such as NO3-, NH4+, SO42-, and PO43- were determined by IC while heavy metals were determined with ASS. The results showed that the high media ratio had no significant effect on the removal while the volume increased 2 times (15%-30%). On the other hand, the overloaded media could affect the treatment status such as turbidity removal due to its color releasing. It’s assumed that LMR of V/V=15% with 2 x 2 cm and 0. 19g/cm3 density was a good condition for this wastewater pollutant load. The percentage removals of COD, Cu, Cd, NO3-, NH4+, SO42- were only slightly increased between 1 day and 3 days of HRT but it showed a remarkable change at 1week of HRT with 7.2% (SO42-) minimum and 25 % maximum (COD) of increasing. However, the removal tended to be stable and slightly increased again after this 1 week of treatment. Turbidity and TSS were the most reduction efficiencies in terms of the physical parameters with the maximum removal of 98.99% and 93.37% respectively. The maximum removal of COD in Phase-1 was 78.01% and 93.68% in Phase-2 respectively while Cu was considered as the good one (about 80%) among heavy metals. Besides that, SO42- was observed as the best removal (81.25%) in terms of nutrient compositions, whereas Fe was the lowest one among all studied parameters. It was proved that the removals were related to the HRT of treatment while each parameter needed different HRT to stabilize the reduction. However, 1week of HRT is the better choice for these parameters’ removal in terms of efficiency, time, and space-saving.