The potential of water hyacinth in the phytoremediation of industrial wastewater

Abstract

In this study, the potential of water hyacinth in the phytoremediation of simulated wastewater containing copper (Cu) and lead (Pb) was studied. Locally available water hyacinth was collected from an uncontrolled environment. The prepared samples were segregated into three different parts (i.e., leaf, stem, and root), ground into powder, and used as the adsorbent for heavy metal removal. Acid digestion method was utilized for the preparation of the samples prior to atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), and AAS was performed to determine the heavy metal concentration for each plant part. Based on the baseline study for identifying the heavy metal content in raw water hyacinth, Cu and Pb mostly accumulated in the root. The pH of simulated wastewater dropped upon the addition of Cu, and the pH gradually increased to 7 after day 7 onward. The overall removal efficiency of Cu decreased from 98.7% to 91.6% as the Cu concentration increased from 1 mg/L to 5 mg/L. Meanwhile, the overall removal efficiency of Pb decreased from 73.6% to 31.3% as the Pb concentration increased from 250 mg/L to 750 mg/L. Thus, water hyacinth is useful for treating wastewater containing heavy metals, particularly Cu and Pb.