Elevated purification of urban rainwater runoff using a calamus constructed wetland with multi-layer carrier fillers

Urban water body pollution caused by storm-water runoff is increasingly serious due to rising global urbanization. We evaluated the effectiveness of a calamus vertical flow constructed wetland purifying urban runoff. This wetland was constructed using three filler layers of rare earth porcelain sand, ceramsite, and clinoptilolite respectively. The results revealed that under the optimal hydraulic load of 80 L/(m2·h), pollutants removal efficiency with the study wetland reached 89.9 %, 95.0 %, 84.7 %, and 76.2 % for the moderate rain runoff, in terms of COD (chemical oxygen demand), SS (suspended solids), TN (total nitrogen) and TP (total phosphorus) respectively. The removal rates of COD, SS, TN and TP by plants and the soil layer together were up to 64.9 %, 50.0 %, 58.1 %, and 28.6 %, respectively, while the rare earth porcelain sand layer had the highest contribution to the removal rate of TP (42.8 %), and the filler removal effect for phosphorus was more significant than that of plants and the soil layer. Although the influent water quality fluctuates with runoff from moderate to heavy torrential rain intensities, most of the effluent water meets the discharging standards. While the effluent quality of light rain runoff with high pollution load slightly exceeded the standards, it still removal rate as high as 88 %, 96.3 %, 73.3 %, 76.2 % for COD, SS, TN, TP. [Display omitted] •A highly efficient multi-fill layers calamus vertical flow CW was developed.•The developed CW is highly adaptable to fluctuation of runoff intensities and influent.•The hydraulic load was optimized to be 80 L/(m2·h) for runoff management.•The multi fillers remove more pollutants than that of plants and the soil layer.