Nutrients and Organic Matter Removal in a Vertical-Flow Constructed Wetland

Constructed wetlands are promising engineering technique that reproduce the conditions of the natural wetlands [1]. They have high water treatment capacity because of the intensive “work” of the plants and the microorganisms. Depending on the conditions various types of plants are growing: common reed (Phragmites australis), rush (Typha latifolia), iris, etc. (Fig. 1). These plants are stable toward the climatic changes and the quality parameters of the medium in which they are growing. The metabolism of the microorganisms plays an important role in the pollutants removal from wastewaters. The main chemical and physical processes are sedimentation, sorption, chemical oxidation, photo degradation, evaporation [2] as well as biotic processes such as aerobic/anaerobic degradation, plants accumulation, phytodegradation, phytoevaporation. Many publica‐ tions demonstrate the removal of suspended solids, organic matter, nutrients and bacte‐ ria from wastewater in constructed wetlands. There are two types of constructed wetlands: surface flow wetlands systems and subsurface flow wetland systems. The latter are subsurface horizontal flow wetlands systems (Fig. 2) and subsurface vertical flow wetland systems (Fig. 3), [3-6]. They are characterized with the different extent of nutrients removal [7-10].