RESEARCHES ON CONSTRUCTED WETLAND SYSTEMS of TURKEY

Abstract

Constructed wetland systems with their cheaper costs, easy design, construction, operation and maintenance and almost zero energy and labor requirement offer an alternative to high-cost quite complex conventional wastewater treatment systems. They are commonly used for treatment of domestic and industrial wastewater in specially designed basins with aquatic plants and can easily be used for small-to-medium sized communities. Despite old history in Europe and the USA, constructed wetland systems are quite a new technology in Turkey. The very first implementations were performed at the beginning of 2000s and the first one was built in 2004 without much considerations on optimum design parameters. Later on, researches mostly focused on appropriate design parameters, substrate materials and aquatic plants of these systems mostly to improve treatment performance of these systems. This study initially presents general information about the constructed wetlands, history and current status of constructed wetland systems of Turkey, then assess previous researches conducted especially for constructed wetlands systems of Turkey.

Keywords

• constructed wetlands
• natural treatment
• turkey
• wastewater