Resilience to flow variability of an open-air green wall for greywater treatment.

Abstract

Water management in urban areas is challenged by climate change and increasing population, and the reduction of water consumption in urban areas is becoming a major issue. Thus, domestic greywater (GW) can be a valuable water source for non-potable purposes, coupled with the benefits provided by a nature-based treatment approach. In this context, green walls have been proposed for GW treatment and local reuse, hence coupling the advantage of GW reuse with the benefits provided by a nature-based treatment approach. The amount of available GW is linked with the occupancy and habits of the inhabitants, but there is still limited knowledge on the impact of variations of GW flow rate on the treatment efficiency and on the health of the green wall. Therefore, this study aims to test the resilience of a modular green wall to variations in GW flow rate over 7 months. The experiments were performed on two configurations fed with synthetic GW: one was fed with a constant flow rate (equivalent to daily GW production per capita) as a reference, while the other received a variable flow schedule. The variable schedule included three phases: underload (-50 %), overload (+50 %) and maintenance flow. Input and output water were analysed to evaluate the treatment performances on fourteen physical-chemical parameters. Results showed that neither underload nor maintenance caused any detrimental effect on GW treatment efficiency or plants. Overload conditions caused a slight decrease in the treatment efficiency (e.g., 93.8 % for BOD₅ compared to 100 % recorded in the control configuration), and plants exhibited visual signs of distress. However, these negative effects disappeared after re-establishing the standard flow rate. These findings demonstrated the resilience of green walls to inflow rate variations. The results provide useful indications for the application of green walls for GW treatment and provide important indications for design guidelines, in terms of maximum values of organic loading rate (∼20 g_BOD5 m^-2 d^-1) and oxygen transfer rate (∼15 g_O2 m^-2 d^-1), and focusing on building maximum capacity as driving parameter.