Performance Evaluation of Field Phytoremediation System

Abstract

Wastewater treatment is a major environmental problem in world particularly in Pakistan, and most conventional treatment approaches either have too much high cost or do not provide acceptable solution. The use of specially selected and engineered plants for environmental clean-up is an emerging technology called phytoremediation. Phytoremediation is the most eco-friendly and cost effective technique for removal of contaminants without the need of excavating or disposing them off. The study was conducted at NUST to treat wastewater of capacity 0.1 MGD and use this treated wastewater for horticulture purposes, fish feed and poultry etc. Apart from this, sampling from 10 points i.e. inlet, sedimentation tank and 8 different ponds were done once a week and different tests like pH, Temperature, TDS, COD, Total Coliforms, Fecal Coliforms etc. were conducted and depending upon the wastewater characteristics, best suitable plants were selected for greater decontamination efficiency for pilot scale plant. Three systems were established, lab scale, pilot scale and parallel scale treatment system, Parallel scale treatment system was designed to check the individual uptake efficiency by plants and the results were the following, water lettuce showed the maximum removal of COD i.e. 90.36%, typha and duckweed almost showed the same value of removal i.e. 83% and pennywort showed the least removal efficiency of COD