Sewage field
A sewage field is a system for purifying waste water .
The wastewater is trickled over as large an area as possible on a water-permeable body of soil . When seeping into the soil, the ingredients are mechanically retained on the soil particles. The substances filtered in this way are biodegraded by sessile microorganisms .
history
With the growth of urban settlements and the knowledge of hygiene , the need for wastewater treatment was recognized. The sewage field technology was an early form of wastewater utilization in the 19th century and led to the emergence of the trickle guard profession. Building on Justus von Liebig's research on the material cycle , it was propagated by social reformers such as Edwin Chadwick and Georg Varrentrapp . With his experience from England, James Hobrecht designed an extensive drainage system for Berlin , which was the third largest city in the world around the 1870s. The development of hygiene research by Robert Koch favored this.
Constructed wetlands are a related methodology of clarification.
In many places, disused sewage fields have been returned to agricultural use or built on. However, if the irrigation is continued and the water supply is maintained, for example in the European reserve Rieselfelder Münster , these areas offer a habitat for numerous waders and water birds . While the Münster sewage fields were more likely to provide quarters for migrating waders in times of active raw sewage irrigation, it is now mainly duck birds that have become particularly numerous here due to the supply of pre-treated sewage that is now significantly poorer in nutrients. Also amphibians have much more frequently settled on this land, they used to be hardly found in the much more heavily loaded water.
Sewage fields in Germany
Examples of former or still existing sewage fields are:
- the Braunschweiger Rieselfelder ,
- the Berlin Rieselfelder ,
- the Rieselfelder diaper in Bielefeld ,
- the Rieselfelder Dortmund ,
- the sewage fields Düren ,
- the Rieselfelder Münster and
- the nature reserve Freiburg Rieselfeld and today's Freiburg district Rieselfeld .
literature
- Enrico Hamann: Reactive mass transport modeling of an urban groundwater contamination from a former sewage field 2009 DNB 999674161 (Dissertation HU Berlin 2009, 157 pages, full text online PDF, free of charge, 159 pages, 19.0 MB).