A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF Eichhornia crassipes, Lemna minor AND Pistias stratiotes IN THE PHYTOEMEDIATION OF POLYESTER BASED TEXTILE EFFLUENT

The textile city of Surat contributes to a large amount of textile effluent being treated in the CETP’s (Common Effluent Treatment Plant) and treated water being released into the Tapi River via various khadi’s and ultimately river Tapi empties into Arabian sea. Textile wastewater also contains substantial pollution loads in terms of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and heavy metals. Among all method investigated presently, Phytoremediation by AMATS (Aquatic Macrophytes Treatment Systems) is a well established and emerging remediation technology for contaminated soils, groundwater, and wastewater which is low-cost and environmental friendly technique that have been employed in this study. A lab scale comparative study was conducted using three aquatic macrophytes like Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), Duckweed (Lemna minor) and Water lettuce (Pistias stratiostes) to remediate untreated polyester based textile effluent entering into the CETP of PEPL (Palsana Enviro Protection Limited) and determine their effectiveness in remediation without the use of fertilizers to sustain their growth. Physicochemical parameters were also compared with the stipulated discharge limits. Parameters such as pH, TDS, Cl-, COD, S-2 and Phosphorous of the treated water have been studied using standard protocol of APHA. Among the three macrophytes Water hyacinth has tremendous potential to remediate pollutants from the textile wastewater as it resulted in reduction of COD was 58.65%, 100% in sulphide, 18.28% in TDS and 100% reduction in phosphorous. Thus water hyacinth made a better clean up than duck weeds and water lettuce. Recommendations were also made for better cleanup goals and plants survivals.