Abstract
A vegetation purification system was applied to improve water quality of Masan Reservoir in Korea, which was composed of constructed wetlands in series. Five different kinds of macrophytes were planted in each wetland. The system was operated with the condition of low concentrations and high hydraulic loadings. Removal efficiencies(%) of chemical oxygen demand(COD) , total nitrogen(T-N) and total phosphorus(T-P) in this system were 9.0, 12.8, 20.1% , respectively. and removal rates(g/$m^2$/d) were 1.9(COD), 0.34(T-N) and 0.05(T-P) . Comparing this system with other wetlands operated at low hydraulic loadings, average removal efficiencies were low but removal rates were relatively high. Accordingly, this system could be applied to imporve reservoir water quality, because removal rates are more important than removal efficiencies in case of reservoir water quality improvement . However, the removal efficiencies and rates of this system are less than those of the hydroponic biofilter method which is a kind of a constructed wetland and utilize root zones of emergent macrophytes for trapping pollutants. Therefore, it is recommended that this system should be modified to utilize root zones of emergent macrophytes enough to improve reservoir water quality more efficiently.