Phytoremediation of aquaculture wastewater by Pistia Stratiotes

Aquatic macrophytes have tremendous potential for remediation of the heavy metal. In this study, Pistia stratiotes had been used as phytoremediation agent to remediate the aquaculture wastewater and heavy metals. The objectives of this study were to study the removal efficiency of Pistia stratiotes in heavy metal and changing in physico-chemical parameter of aquaculture wastewater, to determine the accumulation of heavy metals in Pistia stratiotes and to study the suitability Pistia stratiotes for phytoremediation of aquaculture wastewater and heavy metals. Heavy metal pollution is a serious and widespread environmental problem due to their toxicity. They enter the environment through various natural methods and human activities. Thus, Pistia stratiotes is chose as a phytoremediation agent to treat aquaculture wastewater and heavy metal. Pistia stratiotes is a wide spread emergent aquatic weed. It generally grows on wastewater discharged areas like bogs, lakes, river pools and other places. The aquaculture wastewater was inserted into reactor tank and three reactors (Pistia stratiotes) were put into reactor tank. Then, the concentration of pollutants such as heavy metals and aquaculture waste were analyzed based on HRT. The experiment was repeated with 6 cycles. All the samples were analyzed both before treatment and after the treatment by the XRF and YSI 556 multi-parameter to identify the concentration of each pollutant in the water samples and physico-chemical parameters. The data analysis and statistics were calculated by Microsoft Excel 2010. The result of physico- chemical analysis showed that Pistia stratiotes has the ability to increase the values of pH, DO and reduce the value of TDS. Furthermore, the experiments demonstrate that Pistia stratiotes significantly remove Al, P, Cl, Cd, Fe and Ba respectively in aquaculture wastewater. The average removal efficiencies for these elements were 79.71±8.90, 35.74±12.51, 44.57±26.23, 49.88±37.31, 76.45±28.4, and 7.49±7.76 ppm respectively after three days of HRT. Besides that, Pistia stratiotes can accumulate these elements in the plant tissues. The maximum BCF value of Cd was 34.56 mg/L concentrated which points towards the suitability for removing Cd from surface waters by this phytoremediation agent. Thus, Pistia stratiotes useful to reduce pollutants water sources and increase water quality.