Biological treatment of drippers clogged by the use of treated domestic wastewater

ABSTRACT This study aimed to recover the flow rate of clogged drippers with different doses and permanence times of the product MaxBio. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design in split-split-plot scheme, where the plots corresponded to product doses (80, 160, 240 and 320 mg L-1), subplots to the applied treatments (T1 - without biological treatment, T2 - 1st application of the product, and T3 - 2nd application of the product) and in sub-subplots the types of emitters (Plastro Hydrodrip Super, Netafim Tiran and Netafim PCJ-CNJ), with three replicates. The four irrigation units operated with treated domestic wastewater for 400 h in order to clog the emitters. After applying the product MaxBio, the flow rate of the drippers and the relative flow rate reduction were determined to express the unclogging levels. There was significant effect of T2 and T3 on the recovery of the flow rate of the drippers, while for the reduction of relative flow rate, the doses of the product did not show statistical difference regarding the types of drippers