Temperature impact on operation and performance of Lake Manzala Engineered Wetland, Egypt

Wetlands are shallow water bodies open to the atmosphere, so, they are strongly influenced by weather temperature where temperature modifies the rates of several key biological processes and it is sometimes a regulated water quality parameter. Therefore, studying the impact of temperature on constructed wetland performance and operation is very important to increase its performance and improve the removal efficiency of different pollutants. This research was carried out in Lake Manzala Engineered Wetland (LMEW) which was constructed to treat 25,000 m3/day of the polluted drainage water in Eastern Delta. The main goal of this research is studying the impact of water temperature on performance and operation of LMEW, and determine the best applied flow rate in winter and summer seasons considering temperature variation using PreWet program. The study concluded that the temperature variation affects the wetland performance and operation where the water flow rate could be increased than the design value by 27% in winter months and reduced by 26% in summer months. Also, the application of the new recommended water flow rate improved the removal efficiency of the studied parameters (FC, BOD, TP and total TSS) with percentage varied between 11.7% and 25.8% in winter and with percentage varied from 3.5% to 27.7% in summer.