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Stormwater Management
Stormwater Management
Imran]
On: 30 April 2013, At: 09:54
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Environmental Technology
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tent20
To cite this article: H. M. Imran , Shatirah Akib & Mohamed Rehan Karim (2013): Permeable pavement and stormwater
management systems: a review, Environmental Technology, DOI:10.1080/09593330.2013.782573
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09593330.2013.782573
1. Introduction
Climate change and global warming are crucial problems
worldwide and, as a consequence, sustainable practices for
both energy and water are prominent issues at present. The
general function of a permeable pavement is to collect, treat
and lter surface runo to enhance groundwater recharge.
Traditionally, permeable pavement systems (PPS) have
been used for light-duty pavement due to their insucient
structural loading and geotechnical design considerations.
[1,2] PPS are a simple and eective way to facilitate a structurally stable pavement for the use of pedestrian and vehicular trac, as well as simultaneously address stormwater
runo inltration, storage and dispersal. [3] PPS can provide
sustainable stormwater management by facilitating groundwater recharge, reducing surface runo, reusing stormwater
and preventing the pollution of stormwater for a wide
range of commercial, residential and industrial areas. Management considerations for stormwater from urban areas,
parking lots, footpaths, open marketplaces and highway
shoulders are important and integrated components in the
design of these pavement systems. A permeable and porous
pavement is capable of capturing water on the pavement surface and then allowing it to inltrate into the subgrade layer
and groundwater, which is one of the best stormwater management systems. Conventional road pavement is generally
impervious; consequently, it accumulates a large amount
Corresponding
Figure 1.
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4.2. Geotextiles
Generally, a geotextile layer is set up between the bedding
layer and the base layer to help the biodegradation process and increase pollutant-attenuation capabilities, caused
by organic pollution within the PPS. [25] This layer also
promotes microbial activity for the better treatment of inltrate water. Geotextile membranes also prevent the passage
of ne particles from the bedding layer to a lower layer, as
shown in Figure 2. The bedding layer generally consists of
ne sand, which is very eective in reducing the pollutants
from runo. As a result, air pockets are created within the
bed layer, which makes the surface structurally unstable. [3]
Total suspended solids (TSS) removal through PPS
(UNI Eco-Stone and porous asphalt) in laboratory experiments indicated that the sieving action predominantly
occurs at the geotextile layer, [26] which is contradictory to
some study ndings [27,28] where the stated ltration primarily starts at the surface level of the pavement. This can
occur in the laboratory due to the inuent characteristics
and the lack of crust formation resulting from the wetting
and drying cycles, as well as the impact of vehicular trac
in the real environment of PPS. The combination of geotextiles and permeable pavement has signicant eciency
in treating urban stormwater for reuse. In one study, a geotextile was used at dierent layers in permeable pavements
to assess their pollutant-attenuation performance. [29] The
output of that study indicated that the combination of permeable pavement and geotextiles was more eective in
reducing contaminants from stormwater than conventional
permeable pavement without a geosynthetic layer.
4.3. Heating and cooling systems/earth energy systems
Earth energy and PPS have been used in combination in
pilot-scale operations in various places around the world.
Earth energy systems are also dened as geothermal heat
pumps, GSHP, or geo-exchange systems. Earth energy systems are situated below the surface of the ground and use
the renewable energy stored in the ground. The systems use
ground energy to generate heat energy. [30] The system is an
environmentally friendly technology which facilitates signicant heating and cooling throughout the year, resulting
in energy savings. [31] The systems use comparatively less
energy than traditional heating and cooling systems, and
can signicantly reduce the emission of global carbon and
Figure 3.
abundance. [43] Neural networks are composed of simple neuron-like operating elements (neurons) and weighted
connections between these elements. Network function
is determined largely by the connections between neurons. A biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and dissolved
oxygen model was developed by Chaves and Kojiri [44]
using fuzzy neural networks. Neural network models for
a membrane microltration plant [45] and thermodynamic
eciency of GSHP consider the coecient of performance
[46] for permeable pavement. Urban stormwater quality
was investigated using a back-propagation articial neural
networks model at an unmonitored catchment. The model
analysed a number of water quality constituents, and the
results indicated that the articial neural network model
was more time consuming to construct, and less transparent. Consequently, the model was not a viable technique to
predict urban stormwater quality at an unmonitored catchment. [47] Another study was carried out by Tota-Maharaj
and Scholz [48] for the use of back-propagation neural
networks and testing of the Levenberg-Marquardt, QuasiNewton, and Bayesian Regularization algorithms. In this
case, the neural networks were statistically evaluated for
their eectiveness in prediction based on BOD, ammonianitrogen, nitrate-nitrogen, and ortho-phosphate-phosphorus
with the help of numerical computation of the mean absolute error, root-mean-square error, mean absolute relative
error and the coecient of correlation, where the prediction was compared with the corresponding measured data.
Three models were used to precisely assess the simulation
performance of the runo water quality parameters according to dierent types of permeable pavement investigated.
The models performances were satisfactory in predicting all key parameters, with few statistical errors and high
correlation coecients.
5. Water quality and reuse
PPS have a good track record for improving stormwater quality by signicantly removing potential pollutants
from the stormwater when it inltrates the systems. The
eects of faecal matter in runo and its remediation process within PPS were assessed. [49] The results showed
that the potentially pathogenic organisms were eciently
removed. Stormwater recycling potential and its treatment
eciency through the permeable pavement were greatly
dependent on the pollutant load. [3] The permeable pavement acted as a ltration device in which the removal
rates were 87% for chemical oxygen demand and 50
90% for BOD; however, NO3 -N, NH3 N and NH2 -N had
almost been completely removed by the pavement systems.
[29] Indigenous microbial biomass was more ecient than
a commercial microbial mixture for the oil-biodegrading
process through the permeable pavement by providing sucient nutrients. Scanning electron microscopy showed that a
complex community structure, which had high biodiversity,
was built within the permeable pavement. [50] Pathogenic
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organisms were able to survive at variable temperatures
in PPS. High microbial activities were found on geotextiles and surrounding lower parts of the sub-base, although
low oxygen concentration was found in the space around
the geotextiles. BOD and ammonia-nitrogen-removal eciency were found to be around 99% and 95%, respectively.
[49] Total coliforms, faecal coliforms, faecal streptococci,
heterotrophs, fungi, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Leptospira were often analysed for the pollution potential of
stormwater. It was not possible to predict the peak point of
contamination.
PPS are also able to treat stormwater runo contaminated with heavy metals and hydrocarbons, if a geomembrane is present. Asphaltic permeable pavement can significantly reduce the levels of copper, zinc and lead as well
as motor oil in stormwater. Copper and zinc inltration
of stormwater had a dramatic eect on water quality by
increasing the toxicity through the asphaltic pavement surface. Grasspave and UNI Eco-Stone paver were able to
continuously reduce the copper concentration in stormwater. [12] Hydrocarbons and heavy metals can pollute the
soil and groundwater due to an insucient biodegradation
process during the inltration of stormwater runo through
the permeable pavement. [1113]
Concrete block pavers had signicant eciency in
improving inltrate runo water quality and reducing the
concentration of Cu, Zn, TSS, NO3 -N, NH3 -N, TKN, TP
and Pb. [12,15] Pervious concrete pavers with grass swale
had the capability of reducing TSS, NO3 -N, NH3 -N, and
TN by 91%, 66%, 85%, and 42%, respectively, and by more
than 75% for Cu, Fe, Pb, Mn, Zn, [18] in which the TP loads
only reduced 3%. [17,51,52] The pH of euent shows that
the buer capacities of the concrete are very high, so that
there is no danger of mobilization. Generally, the pH of
stormwater was acidic to neutral. The permeable pavement
could buer the stormwater due to the presence of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate in the pavement
materials. [11]
Stormwater runo quality and quantity were assessed
for three permeable pavements made using asphalt, paver
and crushed stone. [15] The runo volume and contaminants load were signicantly lower for the pavers than
the asphalt pavement. The inltration rate was always
higher for pavers and crushed stone, although the rate
decreased over time. Water quality parameters including
TSS, nitrate-nitrogen, ammonia-nitrogen, phosphate, copper, zinc and lead were considered. TSS concentrations
were <100 mg/L, 425.2 mg/L and 23.3111 mg/L for
the asphalt, paver and crush stone pavement, respectively,
where the concentrations were signicant depending on
the seasonal variation, while the nitrate-nitrogen concentration was nearly 0.65 mg/l for all types of pavement. The
phosphate concentration was around 0.24 mg/L, which was
lower than that found in the study by Bannerman et al.
[53] in asphalt runo. Copper concentrations were above
the USEPA [54] freshwater aquatic toxicity thresholds of
Figure 4.
focus of this pavement section, is the lter course, and special aggregates are recommended for use to signicantly
improve water quality by facilitating the biodegradation
process. These aggregates can be collected from locally
available cheap materials or waste materials. For example, in Malaysia, a locally available cheap material oil
palm shell can be used as a supplementary aggregate for
the lter course as well as the base course. Alternatively,
waste tier chips can be used as an eective supplementary
ltering media for the better treatment of stormwater. Both
materials provide a suitable environment for the biological
process and have good capability to improve water quality.
The waste materials used as aggregates lead to a possible
solution for the environmental problem, as well as reducing
the negative environmental impact.
7.
References
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geotextiles incorporating slow-release phosphate beads for
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