Quality index of wastewater treated in overland flow systems

The objective of this study was to evaluate the quality of treated domestic effluent using the surface runoff technique in slopes cultivated with forages. A quality index was adapted for fertigation and to group effluents that were similar in chemical characteristics using multivariate statistics. The experiment consists of a completely randomized design with a 3x2 subdivided plot scheme with 5 replicates. The plots had three forage species: black oat, ryegrass and rye and the subplots had two effluent rates applied in time: 50 and 100 kg ha(-1) day(-1) of BOD. The quality index was developed using the main components analysis, which provided a reduction of the 25 characteristics analyzed in the effluents in two components that explained 90.54% of the total variance. The quality index for the treated effluents presented high to low restriction in the fertigation and the raw effluent presented severe restriction. The cluster analysis formed three distinct groups of quality, which differed in the effluent application rate used in the treatment system.