Phytoremediation of Cadmium-polluted Water using Eichhornia crassipes

Abstract

Water pollution is becoming a major concern in developing countries, especially Indonesia. Many water bodies in Indonesia are polluted with cadmium. One alternative way to treated cadmium pollution is by using phytoremediation. Phytoremediation is a bioremediation method that uses the plant to remove contaminants and pollutants like heavy metals from water bodies. In this study, the water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) was used to treat cadmium-polluted wastewater concentration between 5-20 mg/L. The highest decreased cadmium concentration was observed in the experiment 20 mg/L, about 55.14% in the first eight days of the experiment. The fluctuations of temperature occurred in all experiments, and it has affected the decrease of dissolved oxygen in all the experiments. There was no significant change in total solid biomass between the control of the experiment and the treated experiments. No significant difference in ash content was observed between samples with cadmium the control samples except for 5 mg/L. Furthermore, it still shows that water hyacinth still has phytoremediation potential due to it can survive in extremely pH and higher cadmium concentration.