Effectiveness of Wastewater Treatment System Development to Reduce TDS Value in Sakon Nakhon Hospital

Abstract

            This retrospective descriptive research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a developed wastewater treatment system at Sakon Nakhon Hospital in reducing total dissolved solids (TDS) levels. A total of 184 wastewater samples were randomly collected from the hospital's wastewater treatment system. These samples were divided into two groups: 92 samples collected before system development and 92 samples collected after system development. The sampling period extended from May 2024 to May 2025. The research instruments included a wastewater quality monitoring form and test kits or basic tools for assessing the quality of treated wastewater. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, percentages, means, and standard deviations. The inferential statistics, paired t-test was employed to compare TDS value before and after the wastewater treatment system. The statistical significance level is set at 0.05.

             The study found that before the development of the TDS reduction system for the hemodialysis unit, the average TDS value was 548.50 mg/L. The maximum value recorded was 898 mg/L and the minimum was 139.00 mg/L. After the development of the TDS reduction system, the average residual TDS value in the treated wastewater was 401.61 mg/L. This represents a statistically significant reduction from the average TDS value observed before the system's development (95% CI = 112.71–171.06, T = 91, p-value < 0.001).