Pilot-scale, on-site investigation of crushed recycled glass as tertiary filter media for municipal lagoon wastewater treatment

ABSTRACT

Glass recycling is a process that faces many obstacles, especially in the closed-loop context. Waste glass separation and transportation can become quite expensive, turning glass collection for remanufacture unfeasible. For this reason, it is important that alternative markets for waste glass are sought. This study evaluated crushed recycled glass as tertiary media in subsurface pilot-scale filters for on-site municipal wastewater treatment, using control sand media filters. Filters were operated over 128 days at a 24-h hydraulic retention time, treating secondary lagoon effluent from the rural municipality of Dunnottar, Manitoba, Canada. Crushed recycled glass filters removed 92%, 90% and 45% of the total suspended solids (TSS), ammonium nitrogen (NH₄⁺–N) and chemical oxygen demand (COD), respectively. Total suspended solids were removed equally well in sand and crushed recycled glass filters (α = 0.05), whereas NH₄⁺–N and COD reductions were 10% and 21% greater in sand media, respectively. Both sand and crushed recycled glass filters failed to achieve phosphorus (P) discharge guidelines. This study shows that there is potential for crushed recycled glass in wastewater filtration, especially to achieve TSS, COD and NH₄⁺–N removal. Small communities served by waste stabilization ponds could benefit from glass media filters, as waste glass could be diverted from curbside collection and utilized locally to polish municipal lagoon effluent.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Wastewater treatment
• filter media
• sand filter
• crushed recycled glass filter
• waste glass‌ ‌

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation (SD-001-17) and the University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship Program (UMGF). The authors would like to thank Daniel Flores and Quintin Litke, for their help with field data collection; Tom Ward, for his assistance with ICP analysis; Mark Cooper, for performing XRD analysis on sand samples and for his valuable insight on the subject; and Tanner Devlin, Alessandro di Biase, Maciej Kowalski and Xugang Zhang, for running our FIA samples.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation (MLLC): [Grant Number SD-001-17]; University of Manitoba: [Grant Number University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship Program].