1. Pontederia crassipes utilization for dual phytoremediation and adsorption in greywater treatment: a techno-economic and sustainable approach.
- Author
-
Azabo M, Abdelhaleem A, Fujii M, and Nasr M
- Subjects
- Adsorption, Charcoal chemistry, Biological Oxygen Demand Analysis, Cyperaceae metabolism, Surface-Active Agents, Wastewater, Biodegradation, Environmental, Waste Disposal, Fluid methods, Water Pollutants, Chemical metabolism
- Abstract
While phytoremediation has been widely employed for greywater treatment, this system suffers from the transfer of considerable amounts of surfactants to the aquatic environment through partially treated effluent and/or exhausted plant disposal. Hence, this study focuses on greywater phytoremediation followed by recycling the spent plant for preparing an adsorbent material used as post-treatment. P. crassipes was used to operate a phytoremediation unit under 23 °C, 60% relative humidity, plant density (5-30 g/L), dilution (0-50%), pH (4-10), and retention time (3-15 days). The optimum condition was 12.7 g/L density, 34.0% dilution, pH 8.4, and 13 days, giving chemical oxygen demand (COD), surfactant, and NH
4 -N removal efficiencies of 94.62%, 90.45%, and 88.09%, respectively. The exhausted plant was then thermally treated at 550 °C and 40 min to obtain biochar used as adsorbent to treat the phytoremediation effluent. The optimum adsorption process was biochar dosage of 1.51 g/L, pH of 2.1, and 137 min, providing a surfactant removal efficiency of 92.56%. The final discharge of this phytoremediation/adsorption combined process contained 8.30 mg/L COD, 0.23 mg/L surfactant, and 0.94 mg/L NH4 + -N. Interestingly, this approach could be economically feasible with a payback period of 6.5 years, 14 USD net present value, and 8.6% internal rate of return.- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF