Constructed Wetlands for Industrial Wastewater Treatment

22Constructed Wetland-Microbial Fuel Cell: An Emerging Integrated Technology for Potential Industrial Wastewater Treatment and Bio-Electricity Generation

Asheesh K. Yadav¹, Pratiksha Srivastava³, Naresh Kumar², Rouzbeh Abbassi³ and Barada Kanta Mishra¹

¹Department of Environmental and Sustainability, CSIR-Institute Minerals and Materials Technology, Bhubaneswar, India

²Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

³Australian Maritime College (AMC), University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia

22.1 Introduction

Constructed wetlands (CWs) or treatment wetlands are man-made engineered systems that are designed and employed to improve the water quality. CWs run with relative low external energy requirements and are easy to operate and maintain. As a result, CWs have been set up all over the world as an alternative to conventional wastewater treatment systems [1, 2]. In general, a CW comprises a basin filled with filter media and planted with water loving plants. The use of CW for wastewater treatment was first tested in Germany in the 1950s [3], but full-scale CWs were only built during the late 1960s [4]. Initially CWs were used to treat municipal wastewaters but later also used to treat industrial and agricultural wastewaters, landfill leachate, and storm water runoff [2]. Among various type of CWs, horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland (HSSF-CW) is the most widely used due to its design simplicity. HSSF-CWs are mainly anaerobic (deeper ...