Ayache LAABASSI¹, Daoud HARZALLAH² & Asma BOUDEHANE^3
1Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Natural and Life Sciences, University of Ferhat abbas, Sétif 1, 19000 Algeria. Email: laabassiayache@gmail.com
²Laboratory of applied microbiology. Faculty of Natural and Life Sciences, University of Ferhat abbas, Sétif 1, 19000 Algeria.
³Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Hadj Lakhdar, Batna, 05000 Algeria.

PERFORMANCES OF A CONSTRUCTED WETLAND TREATING PLANTED WITH EMERGENT AND FLOATING MACROPHYTES UNDER ALGERIAN SEMI-ARID CLIMATE

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Constructed wetlands (CWs) have been successfully used to remove pollutants from wastewater. This research uses two aquatic plant species, Phragmites australis an emergent macrophyte (EM) and Salvinia natans a floating macrophyte (FM) in separate or mixed culture to investigate whether the CW systems using EM and FM are effective for the treatment of domestic wastewater. In order to evaluate the water purification performance several chemical and biochemical parameters were measured. Mixed plant culture recorded the highest and significant removal potential with 97.3% of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅), 95% of chemical oxygen demand (COD), 93% of total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), 87.9% of ammonium-nitrogen (NH₄-N), 52.8% of nitrite-nitrogen (NO₂-N) and 40% of phosphate-phosphorus (PO₄-P). Our results suggest that the mixed culture of P. australis and S. natans is a simple and low-cost technique for effective removal of organic (BOD₅ and COD) and inorganic (TKN, NH₄-N and PO₄-P) pollutants from domestic wastewater.