oa Engineered wetland: A water treatment option

Constructed wetlands are engineered land treatment systems that utilize natural processes to improve water quality. A system that consists primarily of vegetation, aquatic organisms, soils and microbes is designed to assist in treating wastewater by taking advantage of the same process that occur in nature, but in a more controlled setting. Successful and sustainable planning and management of an engineered wetland (EWL) will be highly influenced by the degree of understanding of not only the natural processes that occur in the EWL, but many other equally important elements and how these elements work jointly. Engineered weland has an input--namely influent wastewater, treatment process--and an output effluent. The treatment process becomes more complete when the wastewater has many constituents, some of which may be specific to a certain industry or source. It is essential to ascertain a reliable characterization of water quality and quantity over temporal and spatial variations, and the impact of these elements will directly influence the design of the EWL. The treatment media of the EWL must be carefully selected to sustain itself to the subject conditions and support the targeted water treatment goals. These considerations will lead to an iterative process leading further to an engineered solution. This presentation will demonstrate the framework and scientific basis for the implementation of a research program currently underway at ExxonMobil Research Qatar to design and test a EWL according to local conditions.