Performance of permeable pavement systems on stormwater permeability and pollutant removal

Permeable pavement is an effective means for stormwater runoff control and pollutant removal. However, relatively few studies have examined the characteristics of permeable brick and corresponding permeable pavement system (PPS). In this work, the permeable pavement systems consisted of surface permeable brick layer (concrete or ceramic) with structural layer (including a cement mortar layer, a permeable concrete layer, and a gravel layers) were selected as typical cases to assess their permeability and runoff pollutant removal performance by laboratory experiments. The results indicated that PPS had obvious outflow hysteresis effect. The PPS with ceramic brick layer reached the saturation flow rate earlier and showed larger outflow rate than that with concrete brick layer. Both types of PPSs had a relatively high efficiency (83.8-95.2%) in removing suspended solids (SS) in stormwater runoff mainly due to the interception and filtration of the surface brick layer, whereas the structural layer of the PPS played a vital role in the removal of total phosphorus (TP). The percentage of total nitrogen (TN) removal efficiency via ceramic brick layer accounted for via corresponding PPS was obviously larger than that of concrete brick layer. The PPS also displayed a certain chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal ability: around 14.0-27.0% for concrete type and 20.9-28.9% for ceramic type. Subsequently, a multi-objective evaluation model was implemented based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to identify the optimal scheme in relation to four indices: permeability, environmental benefit, compressive strength, and comprehensive economic cost. The results showed, insofar, the ceramic PPS is preferred with a better economic performance. Our study attempts to select optimal designs of PPS and provides insight into the permeable capacity and the efficiency of pollutant removal in PPS.