Industrialization and urbanization have been causing
tremendous pressure on the water resources. In turn,
to maintain the pace of development, it has become
necessary to search for alternative sources of water.
Conventional wastewater-treatment technologies are
cost-intensive and often pose financial constraint in
developing countries. Therefore, considerable attention
has been directed towards design and development of
low-cost wastewater management technologies coupled
with recycle and reuse benefits. High Rate Transpiration
System (HRTS) is one such technology which can
be implemented for domestic effluent disposal and reuse.
This hypothesis was examined in field and laboratory
experiments conducted by the National Environmental
Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, India.
This communication highlights the use of HRTS
for the removal of pollutants like BOD, nitrogen and
phosphorus from primary treated wastewater. The
low-tech and low-cost wastewater treatment HRTS
shows good performance for reduction of pollutants
with minimal soil and plant contamination