Coliforms removal efficiency of Wupa wastewater treatment plant, Abuja, Nigeria
Samson Balogun, Toochukwu Chibueze Ogwueleka
Abstract
Efficient wastewater treatment is critical to the sustainability of the environment and protection of public health, and wastewater treatment plants. This study thus, investigates the coliforms removal efficiency of Wupa wastewater treatment plant, Abuja, Nigeria over a period of five consecutive years (2013–2017). The study was conducted using secondary data on average annual characteristics of raw sewage (influent) and treated wastewater (effluent) of the wastewater treatment plant. The correlation between the coliforms removal efficiency and other wastewater constituents such as biochemical oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, total suspended solid and E.coli were also explored using paired sample mean t-test static at 5% level of significance (P<0.05. The outcome of this study indicated a total coliform and E.coli removal efficiency ranging between 99.96% to 99.98%, and 87% to 99.97% respectively; with the year 2017 notably having the highest Total Coliform and E.coli removal efficiency of 99.98% and 99.7% respectively. The findings of the research also revealed that in the t-test statistical analysis t-test value of t-critical is less than the value of t-statistic which means that there is strong relationship between the following wastewater constituents; biochemical oxygen demand concentration and Fecal coliform, total suspended solids, E.coli, total coliform and fecal coliform with (p < 0.05) confidence value. In conclusion, the observed coliforms removal efficiency in this study (97% to 99.98%) indicates a high removal efficiency which gives credence to several previous similar studies which reported coliform removal efficiencies of over 90%. The coefficient of correlation (r2) obtained from the research ranges between 0.49 and 0.97.