Phytoremediation potentials of Eichhornia crassipes for nutrients and organic pollutants from textile wastewater

Abstract

We used live water hyacinth (WH, Eichornnia crassipes) to purify effluents from textile factories and monitored changes in the physicochemical properties, organic pollutants, and WH biomass. Although the water plant could not thrive in the highly polluted effluents after eight weeks, it achieved 55, 91, 53, 84, 96, 53, and 55% removal efficiency for total Kjeldahl-N (tK-N), NH₃–N, organic-N, PO₄^3–, SO₄^2–, Cl^–, and hardness, respectively. Likewise, the biomass growth showed a positive and strong correlation with NH₃-N (0.998), tK-N (0.956), organic-N (0.923), pH (0.853), and EC (0.712). In contrast, chemical oxygen demand and total oil and grease (TOG) evinced negative and strong correlations of −0.994 and −0.807, respectively. Further, Cl^– correlated mildly (–0.38), while alkalinity (0.154) and water hardness (–0.296) were less influential on the biomass growth. From the removal models, an average of 312 ± 7.7 g of WH would ensure 100% remediation of the nutrients in 29.2 ± 2.5 days. Except for organic-N, the removal kinetics generally favors pseudo-first-order, suggesting the sorbates' concentration and contact time as the limiting factors. Conclusively, WH is a phytoremediator of high potentials for industrial textile effluents, provided the effluents are conditioned at optimum concentration before contact with mature WH of sufficient biomass weight.

Novelty statement Eichhornia crassipes was used for simultaneous removal of nutrients and organics from textile effluents. The influence of the macrophte's biomass weight and maturity on the remediation process were examined. Also, the limiting parameters that govern the remediation process were investigated via statistical correlation and kinetic study.

Keywords:

• Water hyacinth
• water pollution
• adsorption
• removal efficiency
• wastewater

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the assistance of Mr. Segun Anifowose and Mr. Sunday Ojogbon of the Chemical Oceanography Lab, Department of Marine Science and Technology, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).