Scarcity of water is major issue throughout the world. Domestic wastewater makes a major portion of total wastewater, which affect the environment in the form of causing water pollution. In most of the cases, it is also not well documented. type of wastewater is a combination of effluents from residences, commercial buildings, institutions and similar facilities. Mainly it is generated from kitchen, bathroom, laundry, lavatories, toilets, garbage grinders, dishwashers, washing machines, and water softeners. As a by-product of life and living processes, its characteristics are strongly associated with the lifestyle and population of the served area, and the time of the year. So, their treatment at point source level will help a lot. If any system is available, which can recycle this waste effluent at its source, can create a revolution, and if this recycled water can be used in the same place for irrigation or other cleaning purpose then this will become more useful. Pine needles are treated as problem in study area and domestic wastewater effluents are the problem worldwide as it is one of major source of addition of contaminants in ground and surface water along with the soil contamination.

The present proposal is an attempt to utilize pine needles for preparation of materialwhich can treat the contaminants present in such type of water and give an economic solution for this problem along with use of phytoremediation. Proposed work, on one hand provide another use of pine needle for water purification and also provide an eco-friendly solution of domestic wastewater problem through recycling it. The present project targeted the treatment of model mixture having representative greywater contaminants and GBPNIHE hostel kitchen greywater effluent at lab sale and pilot scale level. Grey water characteristics were monitored continuously for the identification of organic contaminants as the targeted greywater is originated from kitchen. The identified organic contaminants were treated in model mixture using adsorption process. Kew findings were:

The surface area of activated carbon (1000 m2/g), selected for adsorption studies, was comparable to the commercially used activated carbon.

100% turbidity removal was observed at 180 rpm with 1 g/L coagulant dosage in lab scale experiments with greywater sample within 20 minutes time.

The best performing carbon have shown very high breakthrough time even at a very small bed height during fixed bed experiment at lab scale studies. 7 cm bed height was found suitable in the integrated lab-setup with 1 mL min-1 feed flow rate. (Figure 1) and equivalent AC/BAC bed-height was found suitable in pilot setup.

Regeneration capacity of both the activated carbon and bacterial activated carbon is very good at lab scale set up with small bed height with higher concentration of contaminants and low flow rate of model contaminant mixture

During phytoremediation experiments with Brassica juncea and Mentha spicata plants, changes in morphological features like root and shoot length, plant dry weight, soil and plant enzyme variations were observed along with the changes in the target contaminant concentration. Soil was treated with different contaminant (BPA and IBU) ratios during experiments and measured bioaccumulation factor, bio-concentration factor and translocation factors indicated that the leaves are free from the targeted contaminants, so are safe to use if grown in the area contaminated with target contaminants

While treating real greywater using targeted plants, Mentha spicata showed better performance than Brassica juncea while tested in terms of Chemical oxygen demand and nitrate concentration. Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) was reduced up to 75% for Mentha spicata and up to 65% for Brassica juncea, while treated greywater in phytoremediation pilot setup.

Pilot plant (Figure 2) for the treatment of greywater is developed where pine needles have been used for development of activated carbon samples. Biological activated carbon was also developed by he impregnation of bacteria over the activated carbon sample. Both types of carbon samples (AC and BAC) have shown high adsorption capacities for all the targeted compounds (caffeine, bisphenol A and ibuprofen) along with the real grey water originated from GBPNIHE hostel mess. Two edible plants (Brassica juncea and Mentha spicata) were used for treatment of greywater and the targeted organic contaminants (BPA and IBU combinations) and the plants have shown accumulation of contaminants mainly in roots and no accumulation was observed in leaves. So these plants can be grown in kitchen garden while using partially treated or real grey water (based on the chemical constituents).