Md Rezaur, Rahman

Nur Amalina Shairah, Abdul Samat

Onni Suhaiza, Selaman

Rubiyah, Baini

Winnie, anak Renang

Unimas Institutional Repository

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.Malays. Appl. Biol. (2018) 47(1): 65–71THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A FABRICATED BIO-FILTRATIONSYSTEM IN TREATING THE DOMESTIC GREYWATERWINNIE ANAK RENANG1, NUR AMALINA SHAIRAH ABDUL SAMAT1*, RUBIYAH BAINI,MD REZAUR RAHMAN1 and ONNI SUHAIZA SELAMAN11Department of Chemical Engineering and Energy Sustainability, Faculty of Engineering,Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Sarawak, Malaysia*E-mail: asnamalina@unimas.myAccepted 14 February 2018, Published online 31 March 2018ABSTRACTIn many developing countries, domestic greywater remains as a large contributor of organic pollution in rivers. Consideringrivers as the main source of freshwater, the level of pollution need to be minimized by pre-treating the domestic greywaterfrom residential areas prior to release into the drains and rivers. With the need of this pre-treatment process and the economicburden to install current technologies, it is hence necessary to develop a more low-cost wastewater treatment system. Utilizingagriculture wastes as the bio-filter media in the greywater treatment system is one of the possible options to reduce the costof treatment and accumulation of agricultural wastes. Therefore, this study focuses on the performance of agricultural wastes;coconut coir and rice husk, as low-cost packing media and biofilm material carrier for domestic greywater treatment. Theperformance of these media were evaluated based on the removal efficiencies of BOD5 and COD from the wastewater samples.The results have shown that there were insignificant differences in the performance of both media in removing BOD5 andCOD, such that the removal efficiencies achieved by coconut coir media were 43.93% and 38.19% respectively, whilst thelater recorded removal efficiencies of 42.42% and 34.85% respectively.Key words: Greywater treatment, coconut coir, rice husk, packing mediaINTRODUCTIONSarawak River tributaries, situated in capital cityof Sarawak, was significantly polluted and this ismainly due to the discharge of the untreatedwastewater from the households into the open drainsthroughout the city (Ummi et al., 2010). Forinstance, as reported by Ling et al. (2012), the waterquality in the Semariang Batu River deteriorates dueto the discharge of the domestic wastewater from thehousehold septic tanks as well as kitchens andbathrooms. About 97% of water supply in Malaysiacomes from rivers while the remaining are from sub-ground aquifers (Chan et al., 2014). Considering thesignificant role of river as the main source offreshwater, the river pollution needs to be minimizedby treating the domestic wastewater, specifically thegreywater from the residential areas prior to releaseinto the drains and rivers.The high cost of installation of many availabletreatment techniques to control the environmentpollution can burden the society especially thosefrom low-income families. Dubey and Sahu (2014)reported that the wastewater treatment is a majorissue nowadays because treating the wastewaterrequires big cost in terms of equipment andchemicals used. For instance, fixed bed reactor isone of the best methods that is widely applied totreat the domestic greywater. However, the filtersinstalled in the fixed bed reactor are polymer-fiberbased filters which are relatively expensive.Considering the need of domestic wastewaterpre-treatment and the economic burden to install thecurrent technology, it is hence necessary to developa more cost-effective wastewater treatment system.According to El Nadi et al. (2014), one of the waysto mitigate environment pollution is by usingagricultural waste as a bio-packing media to treatthe domestic wastewater before it is dischargedto any water bodies. Agricultural wastes are oftenconsidered to have no economic value and theaccumulated amount of these waste can further causeenvironmental pollution. Utilizing agriculture wasteas a bio-packing media for domestic greywater

The Effectiveness of a fabricated Bio-Filtration System in Treating the Domestic Greywater

http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/21689/1/The%20effectiveness%20of%20a%20fabricated%20bio-filtration%20%28abstract%29.pdf

The Effectiveness of a fabricated Bio-Filtration System in Treating the Domestic Greywater

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