Cadmium and Chromium removal by aquatic plant

Natural water bodies like ponds are used for the cultivation of aquatic plants, which are of ten contaminated with organic and variety of toxic metals likes Cd, Fe, Cu, Cr, Mn and Pb, etc., generated by industrial as well as municipal effluents. Generally, it seen that the concentration of metals Cr, Pb, Cd and Fe in water of ten exceeds than recommended permissible limits of WHO (1995). Thus, it is necessary to maintain the quality of these ponds within permissible limits. Phytoaccumulation is an alternative technique of heavy metals remediation. In this paper, using free floating plant (Water hyacinth) which was obtained from an aquatic system, the removal of heavy metal, such as Chromium and Cadmium were investigated. It has been observed that plants were able to remove Cr and Cd from the municipal contaminated water. The average removal efficiency for the plant species, i.e., water hyacinth was 80.26%, for Cr and 71.28%, for Cd. Average removal rates of Cr and Cd were 0.12μg/day and 0.12μg/day