Evaluación del potencial de humedales artificiales piloto, implementados con la especie heliconia psittacorum, en la remediación de aguas residuales domésticas de bajo caudal para zonas rurales del piedemonte llanero.

Abstract

The present work of degree, evaluated the capacity of remediation, of artificial wetlands of horizontal subsurface flow with the vegetal species Heliconia psittacorum, at pilot scale and with three replicas, in the treatment of domestic wastewater of low flow generated by small urban centers, in order to recommend this scrubber system for remote areas of the foothills of the plains. The mixed factorial design methodology 3X2 was used, where the variables of Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT) and the initial concentration of organic load defined in Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) were manipulated, in order to determine the percentage of removal of contaminants in the parameters BOD, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) for each of the 6 treatments or experiments generated by the design, whose results were exposed to a treatment and statistical analysis with IBM SPSS statistics tools and Microsoft Excel. The results confirmed that this unconventional system effectively eliminates the contamination of the affected liquid considerably, obtaining removal results for BOD of 86.5%, for COD of 76.1% and of 76.4% for TSS, on average of the six treatments. Likewise, the HRT in which better results were obtained were 2 days for 170 mg / l and 8 days for 340 mg / l. In addition, a greater efficiency of about 14% in removal for BOD was determined, compared to other similar investigations. Therefore, it was recommended that for the use of this type of technique in domestic wastewater treatment in other areas of the foothills, in total 20 municipalities, use a hydraulic retention time of 2 days for a maximum concentration of 170 mg / l of 8 days for 340 mg / l. On the other hand, the three hypotheses of the experimental design were evaluated, where the statistical analyzes allowed to approve the hypothesis three, which specifies the dominant influence of the initial TRH-BOD interaction, in the performance of the constructed wetlands