Treatment of urban storm water using adsorbent porous concrete

Abstract

Urban storm water is one of the sources of surface and groundwater pollution in urban areas. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the use of porous concrete containing zeolite and a sand filter for sustainable retention and treatment of urban storm water. Treatments of porous concrete containing zeolite and a sand filter were studied and compared and parameters of chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, concentration of lead, electrical conductivity (EC), total suspended solids (TSS) and pH in the treatment media influent and effluent were measured. The results showed that, except for EC and pH, the porous concrete containing zeolite with sand filter improved all of the above parameters significantly. The removal efficiency for COD, turbidity, lead and TSS was found to be more than 70, 90, 98 and 70% for porous concrete containing zeolite with a sand filter compared to 11, 37, 35 and 53% for the control porous concrete.