Stormwater treatment measures and their performance analysis for removing pollutants
Weerawardhana, Ishika (2024)
Diplomityö
2024
School of Energy Systems, Ympäristötekniikka
Kaikki oikeudet pidätetään.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe202401081804
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe202401081804
Tiivistelmä
Stormwater management is becoming more and more challenging due to rapid urbanization that continuously expands impervious areas and climate change that causes higher precipitation. Thus, it is crucial to have the best-performing treatment systems to reduce the contamination of water bodies and to avoid health risks while controlling flooding.
This study, conducted for the StoPWa project, is an extensive literature survey that investigated different types of stormwater pollutants that are widely found across the globe. In addition, the performance of ten stormwater treatment systems, namely, dry ponds, wet ponds, wetlands, media filters, swales, filter strips, bioretention cells, infiltration trenches, permeable pavements and soakaways were investigated in terms of pollutant removal efficiency, treatment capacity, environmental impacts based on life cycle assessment (LCA) studies and cost-effectiveness.
It was observed from the analysis that there is a wide range of pollutants that impair water quality, including total suspended solids, nutrients, heavy metals, organic pollutants, microplastics, pathogens, etc. Besides, the results of the performance evaluation revealed that bioretention cells, porous pavement systems and infiltration trenches were highly effective in removing total solids, nutrients and metals. At the same time, swales, wet retention basins, sand filters and wetlands were identified as economically and environmentally friendly options. Whereas porous pavement systems had the poorest environmental performance related to both global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication potential. However, depending on the factors like characteristics of the catchment area, pollutant load or the maintenance procedures, the performance of any treatment system can vary significantly.
This study, conducted for the StoPWa project, is an extensive literature survey that investigated different types of stormwater pollutants that are widely found across the globe. In addition, the performance of ten stormwater treatment systems, namely, dry ponds, wet ponds, wetlands, media filters, swales, filter strips, bioretention cells, infiltration trenches, permeable pavements and soakaways were investigated in terms of pollutant removal efficiency, treatment capacity, environmental impacts based on life cycle assessment (LCA) studies and cost-effectiveness.
It was observed from the analysis that there is a wide range of pollutants that impair water quality, including total suspended solids, nutrients, heavy metals, organic pollutants, microplastics, pathogens, etc. Besides, the results of the performance evaluation revealed that bioretention cells, porous pavement systems and infiltration trenches were highly effective in removing total solids, nutrients and metals. At the same time, swales, wet retention basins, sand filters and wetlands were identified as economically and environmentally friendly options. Whereas porous pavement systems had the poorest environmental performance related to both global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication potential. However, depending on the factors like characteristics of the catchment area, pollutant load or the maintenance procedures, the performance of any treatment system can vary significantly.