Abstract
Lots of pollutants typically originating from urban transportation are accumulating on the paved surfaces during dry periods and are washed-off directly to the river during a storm. Also, paved surfaces are contributing to increase in peak flows and volume of stormwater flows. These are the main reasons why the water quality of rivers and lakes remain polluted and still below standards. Currently, several management practices are being applied in developed countries but the design standards are still lacking. This research was conducted to develop a treatment technology that can be useful to address the problems concerning runoff quality and quantity. A lab scale infiltration device consisting of a pretreatment tank and media zone was designed and tested for various flow regimes characterizing the low, average and high intensity rainfall. Based on the experiments, the high intensity flow resulted to increase in outflow event mean concentration (EMC) of pollutants, about twice as much as the average outflow EMC. However, 78 to 88% of the total suspended solids were captured and retained in the pretreatment tank because of sedimentation. The removal of heavy metals such as zinc and lead was greatly affected by the vertical placement of woodchip layer prior to the media zone. It was observed that the high carbon content (almost 50%) in the woodchip provided opportunity for enhancing its uptake of metal by adsorption. The findings implied that the reduction of pollutants can be greatly achieved by means of proper pretreatment to allow for settling of particles with a combination of using high carbon source media like woodchip and a geotextile mat to reduce the flow before filtering into the media zone and finally discharging to the drainage system.
