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Strategies and techniques to enhance constructed wetland performance for sustainable wastewater treatment

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Abstract

Constructed wetlands (CWs) have been used as an alternative to conventional technologies for wastewater treatment for more than five decades. Recently, the use of various modified CWs to improve treatment performance has also been reported in the literature. However, the available knowledge on various CW technologies considering the intensified and reliable removal of pollutants is still limited. Hence, this paper aims to provide an overview of the current development of CW strategies and techniques for enhanced wastewater treatment. Basic information on configurations and characteristics of different innovations was summarized. Then, overall treatment performance of those systems and their shortcomings were further discussed. Lastly, future perspectives were also identified for specialists to design more effective and sustainable CWs. This information is used to inspire some novel intensifying methodologies, and benefit the successful applications of potential CW technologies.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the CRSRI Open Research Program (Program SN: CKWV2015240/KY), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21177075), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-10-0554), and the fund from Shanghai Tongji Gao Tingyao Environmental Science & Technology Development Foundation.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, People’s Republic of China

      Haiming Wu

    2. Shandong Key Laboratory of Water Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of Environmental Science & Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, People’s Republic of China

      Haiming Wu, Jian Zhang, Shuang Liang, Zhen Hu & Hai Liu

    3. National Engineering Laboratory of Coal-Fired Pollutants Emission Reduction, Shandong University, Jinan, 250061, People’s Republic of China

      Jinlin Fan

    4. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia

      Huu Hao Ngo & Wenshan Guo

    5. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

      Hai Liu

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    Correspondence to Jian Zhang.

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    Haiming Wu and Jinlin Fan contributed equally to this work.

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    Wu, H., Fan, J., Zhang, J. et al. Strategies and techniques to enhance constructed wetland performance for sustainable wastewater treatment. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 14637–14650 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5151-x

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