Comparison of measured and simulated distribution of microbial biomass in subsurface vertical flow constructed wetlands

The multi-component reactive transport module CW2D has been developed to model transport and reactions of the main constituents of municipal wastewater in subsurface flow constructed wetlands and is able to describe the biochemical elimination and transformation processes for organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus. It has been shown that simulation results match the measured data when the flow model can be calibrated well. However, there is a need to develop experimental techniques for the measurement of CW2D model parameters to increase the quality of the simulation results. Over the last years methods to characterise the microbial biocoenosis in vertical subsurface flow constructed wetlands have been developed. The paper shows measured data for microbial biomass and their comparison with simulation results using different heterotrophic lysis rate constants.