Rhizofiltrating Impact of Nymphaea nouchali (Blue lotus) Plant in a Source of Wastewater

Abstract

Recently, water pollution has disrupted almost every aspect connecting people and nature as it affects all the major water bodies such as rivers, in urban or rural areas. One of the ways in treating bodies of water is rhizofiltration, which uses plants, specifically macrophytes, capable of absorbing heavy metals and contaminants. Utilizing rhizofiltration set-ups, we tested the hypothesis that N. Nouchali plant can lessen the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) of a wastewater source. Two set-ups were prepared to have1.75 L of wastewater with five N. nouchali plants and three N. nouchali plants, respectively. Ten mL from each set-up was subjected to the COD test for four weeks. One-way ANOVA was employed to determine the significant difference between the pre-test having 110 ppm and post-test having 95.365 ppm and 97.168 ppm. The value of computed F = 6.2135 was compared to Fcriticalin 0.05 level which is 0.0016 and 0.01 level which is 2.7729 (two-tailed test). Thus, there is a significant difference on the effect of rhizofiltrating using N. Nouchali plant on the wastewater samples. Findings revealed that the two set-ups showed remarkable changes on the COD, specifically the set-up with five N. nouchali plants, which decreased 14.635 ppm on the baseline COD. The study showed that using N. nouchali could decrease the COD of contaminated water and purify the aquatic ecosystem. With the use of the N. nouchali plant, the rivers that are connected to canals would not be contaminated because of their low heavy metal content as a result of rhizofiltration.