Performance reconnaissance of stormwater proprietary best management practices

Abstract

This paper presents a study to investigate the relative pollutant removal effectiveness of three proprietary end-of-pipe Best Management Practices (BMPs), namely, Baysaver, CDS, and Stormceptor. In this study, controlled conditions were used in order to provide documentation for the performance of the BMPs. For that purpose, a prototype facility was constructed at the University of Central Florida. For each BMP, five tests were conducted with five different flow rates: 1.6, 1.28, 0.96, 0.64, and 0.32 cfs. The monitored pollutants were sediments, nutrients, metals, and litters such as organic leaves, soda cans, plastic bottles, and cigarette butts and boxes. The results showed that some of the pollutants decreased in concentration while others increased between the influent and the effluent of the units. TSS load reductions for Baysaver, CDS and Stormceptor were 62.2%, 71.2%, and 83%, respectively. The performances of the studied BMPs for the pollutants were different. All the studied BMPs had good performance in removing the large sediment particles and litter. However, CDS had lower average inflow velocities in all tests than Baysaver and Stormceptor, causing sediment accumulation in the CDS inlet pipe. This study also showed that there was an increase in the total nitrogen concentration in Stormceptor while the nitrate/nitrite concentration increased in Baysaver and CDS. Other factors that should be considered in BMP evaluation are also presented in this paper.

Keywords:

• Stormwater
• proprietary BMP
• suspended sediments
• nutrients
• heavy metals

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) for funding this research project. Baysaver, Inc., CDS Technologies, and Rinker Materials are acknowledged for their generous donation of the BMP units.

Notes

*Leaves and twigs.

*One cigarette box disintegrated.

*Calculated from Equation (1).

**One cigarette box was disintegrated.

*Calculated from Equation (1).

*Calculated from Equation (1).

*N/A = Not available because of the undetected concentrations in the influent or/and effluent.