Evaluating the Efficiency of Salicornia, Typha, and Juncus Aquatic Plants in Extra Phosphate Phytoremediation from the Aqueous Solutions

Abstract

Background: The phosphorous as one of the agricultural, industrial, and urban pollutants has an important role in the eutrophication phenomenon of the surface waters. Objectives: In this research, the effect of three species of aquatic plants, including Salicornia (Persica), Typha, and Juncus, were investigated and compared with the potential of phosphate uptake. Methods: After preparing the condition and cultivation of plants, they were irrigated by synthetic wastewaters with various phosphate concentrations (7, 18, and 28 mg. L-1) for 28 days. In this test, the adsorbed phosphate was calculated based on mg. g-1 of the plant dry tissues weight using two methods: mass balance and wet digestion methods. Results: The results showed that increase in the pollutants concentration and passing time had a significant effect on the accumulative increase in phosphate uptake in all three plants at 5% level. Thus, the maximum adsorption capacity was obtained on the 28th day in high concentration of pollutant which was measured for Salicornia, Juncus, and Typha as 9.68, 6.37, and 7.68 mg. g-1 of plant dry tissues weight, respectively. Also based on the reported regression coefficients values and the obtained equations, it can be concluded that the variable ‘time' was more effective than the ‘concentration' variable in terms of adsorbed phosphate by the studied plants. The results of the measurement of phosphate uptake in the terrestrial and aerial parts showed that the maximum uptake was measured as 6.35 and 10.33 mg. g-1 of terrestrial and aerial parts dry weight in Salicornia plant, respectively. Moreover, the results showed that the translocation factor in Salicornia, Juncus, and Typha plants were 1.54, 1.12, and 1.46, respectively, as Salicoenia was maximum and Juncus was minimum. Conclusions: Finally, according to the obtained results from research, all three plants can be known as the hyper-accumulate plants, and they can be used for phytoremediation of phosphate from the agricultural soils according to the high capacity of these plants and prevent these pollutants from entering to the surface waters.