ENGINEERING APPLICATION AND TREATMENT PERFORMANCE OF DECENTRALIZED CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS FOR RURAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT IN RUIJIN, CHINA

Rural domestic wastewater treatment is an important element in the improvement of rural human settlement and a vital initiative to implement China's rural revitalization strategy. Decentralized constructed wetlands (DCWs) have been widely applied in rural wastewater treatment worldwide due to excellent operation performance. This study discusses the process mechanisms and field application of DCWs, and a case study of rural domestic wastewater treatment facilities using this technology in 10 townships in Ruijin City, China, and comprehensively analyzes and evaluates the operational treatment efficiency. The results showed that the effluent quality of all wastewater treatment facilities was better than the national discharge standard, and the average removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), total phosphorus (TP), and suspended solids (SS) being 85.41%, 91.40%, 87.16%, 81.93%, and 84.02%, respectively. Moreover, the data analysis found that climate temperature has a significant influence on the treatment performance of DCWs, while geographical variation did not exhibit this feature. These findings demonstrated that DCWs have excellent technical, economic, and ecological effectiveness and play a significant role in enhancing rural sewage treatment and water environment repair engineering.