Treatment performance and microorganism community structure of integrated vertical-flow constructed wetland plots for domestic wastewater

In order to investigate the treatment performance and microorganism mechanism of IVCW for domestic wastewater in central of China, two parallel pilot-scale IVCW systems were built to evaluate purification efficiencies, microbial community structure and enzyme activities. The results showed that mean removal efficiencies were 81.03 % for COD, 51.66 % for total nitrogen (TN), 42.50 % for NH4+-N, and 68.01 % for TP. Significant positive correlations between nitrate reductase activities and TN and NH4+-N removal efficiencies, along with a significant correlation between substrate enzyme activity and operation time, were observed. Redundancy analysis demonstrated gram-negative bacteria were mainly responsible for urease and phosphatase activities, and also played a major role in dehydrogenase and nitrate reductase activities. Meanwhile, anaerobic bacteria, gram-negative bacteria, and saturated FA groups, gram-positive bacteria exhibited good correlations with the removal of COD (p = 0.388), N (p = 0.236), and TP (p = 0.074), respectively. The IVCW system can be used to treat domestic wastewater effectively.