Proceedings

Rural populations in the many parts of the UK still heavily rely on the use of septic tanks (ST) for the treatment of their domestic wastewater. With the move towards tightening environmental discharge requirements, generating a net environmental gain with any new infrastructure, and reducing the overall carbon footprint of the water industry, any new flowsheets proposed to upgrade these systems must consider its contribution to this agenda whilst providing reliable effluent treatment. This paper will present the results of an optioneering analysis performed for an example 100 population equivalent rural town in Scotland, for the upgrade of a ST system. The results show nature based solutions are able to deliver adequate effluent quality whilst delivering additional benefits including reduced carbon footprint, process resilience, biodiversity, amenity value, and a potential to contribute to the local socio-economic wellbeing.