Investigation into the Possibility of Phytoremediation of Industrial Wastewater Containing Zinc

Intense pollution of industrial wastewater and surrounding lands and pollutants disposal into surface and ground waters, endanger our environment and our water resources. So, now a days finding solutions for this national and international concern is necessary. At current time one can use different methods to decrease the amount of pollutants in soil and water, e.g. cleaning soils contaminated with heavy metals by acids or refinement of wastewaters at treatment plants. These methods are mostly time consuming and expensive and at last they contaminate another section of surrounding environments. Therefore, finding a relatively fast and low cost technology without marginal harmful effects is vital. Using the natural processes; for example the biological potentials of green plants, is a reliable and safe solution for these problems.The main goal of this research was to investigate the possibility of phytoremediation of industrial wastewater contaminated with zinc. In order to conduct this project nine plastic lysimenters with 60 cm diameter and 100 cm height equipped with a drain pipe at the bottom were filled by granular sandy-loam soil. Sunflower, Avena sativa and Reed (Arundo donax) were planted in these lysimeters and they were irrigated by clean water until the plants were settled up. Then the irrigation was continued by contaminated wastewater which consisted of 25 mg/l zinc. In order to evaluate the soil ability in absorbing zinc, the drain effluent was measured and analyzed. The concentration of zinc in drain effluent of all lysimeters was under the standard limits and the performance of the system in absorbing zinc was found satisfactory up to 98.5%.