Pilot 3: Constructed wetland system for wastewater effluent

A pilot-scale constructed wetland installation was investigated by GIWK to assess its ability to remove MPs from the final effluent of the Wschód WWTP in Gdansk, Poland, located approximately 3.5 km from the Baltic coastline.

The pilot plant has been designed as a two-stage hybrid system and consisted of two types of wetland beds that differ in their operating conditions and characteristics: horizontal flow (HF-CW) and vertical flow constructed wetland (VF-CW) with different characteristics:

To determine the microplastics removal efficiency of the constructed wetland pilot, samples were taken from the WWTP effluent (pilot inlet) and from the pilot effluent. The samples for MP analyses were collected with the use of the AAU filtering unit. The required amount of water for the sampling process was stored in steel tanks, 200 L of volume each. Additionally, between September and October 2021, 5 series of laboratory analyses on basic pollutant parameters were performed and the wastewater samples were taken at the inlet of the pilot station, at the outlet of HF-CW and then at the outlet of VF-CW.

Read more in the report Piloting technologies for microplastics removal from urban waters