Abstract
Among the numerous clean-up techniques for water treatment, sorption methods are widely used for the removal of trace metals. Phragmites australis is a macrophyte commonly used in constructed wetlands for water purification, and in the last decades, its use as biosorbent has attracted increasing attention. In view of a circularly economy approach, this study investigated improvement of trace metal removal by recycling the biomass of P. australis colonizing a constructed wetland, which operates as post-treatment of effluent wastewater from an activated sludge plant serving the textile industrial district of Prato (Italy). After the annual mowing of the reed plants, the biomass was dried and blended to derive a sustainable and eco-friendly biosorbent and its sorption capacity for Fe, Cu, and Zn was investigated comparing the batch system with the easier-to-handle column technique. The possibility of regeneration and reuse of the biosorbent was also evaluated. The biomaterial showed an interesting sorption capacity for Cu, Fe, and Zn, both in batch and in column experiments, especially for Fe ions. The immobilization of the biosorbent in column filters induced some improvement in the removal efficiency, and, in addition, this operation mode has the advantage of being much more suitable for practical applications than the batch process.
Highlights
In this century, water pollution is of increasing concern to society, in addition exacerbated by the problem of water availability as a result of climate changes
The batch experiment was performed allowing the P. australis biomass to come into contact with the synthetic wastewater (SWW) for 20 min
Since a rapid sorption is important for improving the process efficiency in practical application, we purposely decided to test the biosorption capacity of the P. australis biosorbent only at a short contact time
Summary
Water pollution is of increasing concern to society, in addition exacerbated by the problem of water availability as a result of climate changes. Among them, constructed wetlands (CWs) are effective systems based on the use of macrophytes that exploit their high growth rate and large root apparatus for the direct uptake of pollutants (Fibbi et al 2012; Mitsch 2012; Newete and Byrne 2016) and, above all, for the synergistic interactions with the microbial communities of CWs (Sacco et al 2006; Truu et al 2009). Such simple and low-cost technology is extensively used for the treatment of domestic sewage, as well as of industrial and agricultural wastewater (Gorgoglione and Torretta 2018; Masi et al 2018).
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