PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AERATED MODIFIED TRICKLING FILTER FOR ADVANCED TREATMENT OF SECONDARY EFFLUENT OF WASTEWATER

Egypt is currently facing a major problem to provide water suitable for agriculture as a result of the growing shortage of water received from upstream countries. Nowadays, many governorates in Egypt are rapidly growing like Cairo, Alexandria, etc.; these governorates suffer from various problems regarding the availability of potable water for human usage. As a result, we need to reduce the amount of potable water used in irrigation and substituting it with well treated wastewater. Implementing economical and effective wastewater treatment techniques is an urgent requirement. The main objective of this research is to assess the technique performance of the aerated modified trickling filter (AMTF) which was monitored for several months using different multimedia and the analysis focused on chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solid (TSS) of the influent and effluent wastewater. A pilot plant was designed, erected and operated in Zenien wastewater treatment plant, Giza Egypt. The media named sandwich media consists of non-woven polyester, date palm fiber and hair buckles with sponges. The results showed that the sandwich media was effective in TSS removal with efficiency reaching 94.6 %, while the removal of COD reached 86 % and BOD removal reached 85 %.