How it Works
The system is based upon the biotechnical efficiency of a root-permeated soil layer. This ecotechnical procedure aims at using not only the performance of a variety of species of bacteria, fungi and plant species, but also to incorporate the functions of their natural biotope. The establishment of a complex ecosystem, the interactions among species and their animate and inanimate elements uses natural feedback cycles.
The soil, also called the pedosphere, is the meeting point of earth (geosphere), water (hydrosphere) and air (atmosphere). It represents our most complex ecosystem. 1 g of soil contains between 10 million and 100 billion organisms. Close to the roots of aquatic plants there are 10 to 100 billion organisms. Approximately 2,000 types of bacteria and some 10,000 types of fungi live in root-permeated soil that is charged with wastewater. In comparison, the activated sludge of a sewage treatment plant has approximately 600 types of bacteria. The possibilities for this ecotechnical method result from the performance and the set-up of reeds. They are oxygen-autonomous in the root section to a certain extent and supply the root-permeated soil with oxygen.
Aquatic plants, like reeds are able to supply roots and their adjacent areas with oxygen via a wide-meshed tissue, the so-called aerenchyma. Hence, in the soil, the reeds are not the purifying but the activating partner of the systems, as shown by the high amount of soil organisms associated with marsh plants. The root mesh allows for the creation of oxic and anoxic soil sections, so that aerobic, anerobic and aereophile bacteria are able to exist and degrade contaminants.
Such a soil - plant fabric is one of the most effective structures known in wastewater purification. The fabric is made permeable by the root activity, and retains its permeability over a long time.
Reed roots grow horizontally. The roots are often tubes with the diameter of a broomstick. Even in the case of dying off, they do not "clog" the soil but rather make it more permeable for horizontal throughflow as the installation ages. The reeds do not ever have to be mowed.
As a rule, the structure is built on top of a natural or man-made impermeable layer, so that the groundwater layer is not affected and wastewater flows controlled through the root-permeated soil.
