Phytoremediation of Synthetic Wastewater by Pistia stratiotes

The heavy metal contamination in water occurred by huge industrialization and urbanization impact that cause degradation of performance of surrounding environment. Phytoremediation was a green used to overcome the problem in the water that located near to industrialization discharging wastewater site for example textile factory and soon. In this study, synthetic wastewater contained heavy metal element such Cd, Cr, Ni and Zn was treated by using potential plant. The potential plant used in this study was from type aquatic macrophytes. Pisria strariores (water lettuce) was one type of free- floating macrophyte was used to remediate the contaminated synthetic wastewater. The ability for the plant to make positive changes to the physicochemical parameter (DO, TDS and pH), efficiency to removed heavy metal element and accumulation of heavy metal in the plant (Cd, Cr, Ni and Zn) were evaluated.
Prepared synthetic wastewater was used as influent to be treated in constructed wetland reactors with the present of water lettuce (Pistia strariotes) and another constructed wetland reactors without plant as control tank. The HRT was set to 2 days for each of 6 batches. The wastewater sample analysis was carried out using YSI 556 MPS and AAS before and after experiment for each batch while the plant samples analysis was carried out using AAS for analysing plant before and after treatment.
The data analysis and statistics were calculated by Microsoft Excel 2010. The result of the physicochemical analysis showed that Pistia stratiotes have the ability to mobilise positive change to physicochemical parameter. Furthermore, the experiments demonstrate that Pisria stratiotes significantly remove Cd, Cr, Ni and Zn in synthetic wastewater. The removal efficiencies for these elements were 40.29±24.82, 40.60±17.38, 56.10±26.34 and 57.78±25.71 respectively after two days of HRT. Besides that, Pistia straziotes can accumulate these elements in the plant tissues. The maximum BCF value of Zn was 67.82mg/L concentrated which points towards the suitability for removing Zn from surface waters by this phytoremediation agent. Thus, Pistia stratiores useful to reduce pollutants water sources and increase water quality. This study has shown that Pistia stratiores sp was suitable used in phytoremediation of water that contaminated by heavy metal because of its ability to reduce the concentration of heavy metal in wastewater.