Phytoremediation of Water Pollutants using Eichhornia crassipes and Lemna minor

N. K. Srivastava; Shefali Gupta

Abstract

Due to the paucity of availability of clean water sources throughout the world over, discharge of industrial wastewater into the receiving water bodies has become a serious threat to the environment because of major source of various contaminants and pollutants. Conventional wastewater technologies are usually time consuming, expensive, less efficient and produce secondary pollutants, therefore, scientists and researchers are trying to overcome this problem with novel methods. Phytoremediation is very cost-effective and green emerging technology which has long-lasting applicability. Therefore, this phytoremediation study examined the ability of two aquatic plants i.e. water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and lesser duckweed (Lemna minor) to remove TDS, COD and DO from the synthetic wastewater. Each containing labelled plants (WH, LD & WH+LD) and the pollutants level were measured in every week for six weeks period. The results showed sufficient decline in the concentration of pollutants. Water hyacinth was able to remove 66.4% COD, 63.7% of TDS and 28.5% of DO, whereas lesser duckweed was able to remove 78.0% of COD, 60.0% of TDS and 28.5% of DO. Water hyacinth and lesser duckweed (WH+LD) collectively removed 74.0% of COD, 53.7% of TDS and 39.2% of DO.

Abstract

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