Performance of drippers in two filtering systems using sewage treatment effluent

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of three models of drippers using treated sewage effluent, pure and diluted, and two types of filters, screen and disc. The treated sewage effluent used in the experiment was collected from the city's treatment plant. The experiment included 12 lateral lines with three types of emitters to apply pure (100%) and diluted (50%) effluent filtered by screen and disc filters. The combination of those factors set the treatments: T1 (50% effluent diluted in fresh water filtered by a screen filter); T2 (50% effluent diluted in fresh water filtered by a disc filter); T3 (pure effluent filtered by a screen filter); T4 (pure effluent filtered by a disc filter). The results showed that the flat type emitter is less sensitive to clogging, the disc filter is the most suitable to prevent clogging and the use of pure or diluted sewage effluent increases the drippers' flow rate coefficient of variation.