Seasonal and ageing effects on SFTW hydrodynamics study by full-scale tracer experiments and dynamic time warping algorithms

•Seasonal characterization of SFTW hydraulic behavior in full-scale system.•Evidence of ageing effect on surface flow treatment wetland.•Breakthrough curves comparison by dynamic time warping method.•Highest short-cutting index and strongest advective flow regime occurred in winter.

Surface flow treatment wetlands (SFTW) are considered as ecological engineering treatment wetlands used for wastewater and stormwater treatment. In France SFTW are commonly located between the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and the receiving aquatic environment. Furthermore, they are not considered as a regulatory treatment step but as a complementary element to WWTP. In this regard, there is currently no established design and sizing rule since (i) they are built on the remaining space after WWTP construction, (ii) it is a nature-based system, subject to high variability and complex interactions and (iii) feedback on ageing effects is lacking. This study permitted to qualify and to quantify seasonal and ageing effects on the SFTW hydraulic behavior which is a pond. The combination of fluorescent dye tracer application in a real system and data analysis by dynamic time warping (DTW) allowed to perform efficiency comparisons between all campaigns. Similar behaviors of dimensionless retention time distributions were observed for all campaigns. They were eventually linked with the SFTW shape. The analysis of these curves highlighted that the measured mean residence time was always lower than the nominal hydraulic residence time, due to preferential flow and dead-zones. A statistical approach suggested that the winter hydraulic behavior was characterized by the highest short-cutting index and strongest convective flow regime in comparison to others campaigns. A lower vegetation density, especially subaquatic plants, and presence of important preferential flow could explain this observation. DTW processing on RTD curves shed light on the ageing effect that has a much bigger impact than seasonal effect. This is mainly due to sediments accumulation, sludge and vegetation development.

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