Location: Dilli Village, Fraser Island QLD
Products: SPEL Floating Treatment Wetlands
The Challenge
The University of the Sunshine Coast wants to setup a polishing system for their wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) at their environmental education centre, in Dilli Village on Fraser Island.
As a popular tourism attraction, Fraser Island has a series of “booms and busts” with their population across the year.
This provides unique challenges to traditional wastewater treatment plants that rely on a continuous and relatively predictable supply of “food” to maintain healthy microbiological ecosystems in the plant.
The Solution
We are able to provide a biological alternative using our SPEL Floating Treatment Wetlands.
The main features of these floating treatment media are:
- Removal of Total Suspended Solids, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus), heavy metals and organic matter from the wastewater along with pH buffering and stabilization
- Low maintenance
- Able to operate in fluctuating nutrient levels.
- Able to operate in fluctuating temperatures.
The installation of the floating wetlands provides a buffering function that reduces the impact of fluctuations in population. These floating wetlands accommodate some of the lag that occurs when the WWTP is still responding to a rapid increase, and polishes the effluent that leaves the traditional system.
Using locally endemic species for nutrient removal has been a unique challenge, however, preliminary results indicate they are more than capable, along with a healthy biofilm population, to reduce the nutrient from the effluent. Plants that were initially 300mm tall in viro-tubes are now exceeding 2m height after only 6 months.
Students from the University of the Sunshine Coast are monitoring the water quality and we will report back soon.