Phytoremediation of Batik Industry Effluents using Aquatic Plants (Equisetum hyemale and Echinodorus palaefolius)

Batik industries generate effluents with high COD and BOD concentration. The conventional wastewater treatment plants which are commonly used to treat the effluents still have some shortages. Those plants do not generally degrade the pollutants and cause sludge accumulation thus creating disposal problems. In addition, these methods are relatively expensive and unaffordable by batik small and medium enterprises. In this study a laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate the capabilities of some aquatic plants to remove different pollutants in wastewater. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the feasibility of phytoremediation using some aquatic plants to treat batik industry effluents as a cheaper and simpler alternative to treat batik industry effluents. This research compared Equisetum hyemale and Echinodorus palaefolius in two different reactors to treat several kinds of batik effluents which have been pre-treated in a wastewater treatment plant. The plants were planted on sand, gravel and activated carbon media for 15 days to get acclimated. The batik effluents were contacted in batch system. The Equisetum hyemale removed COD and BOD until 86.96% and 88.53% in variation of effluents concentration after 14 days of contact, while Echinodorus palaefolius COD and BOD removal efficiencies are 88.22% and 90.22%. Equisetum hyemale showed the best performance in effluents from wax removal tank and Echinodorus palaefolius were best in removing COD and BOD from effluents of sedimentation tank. It was observed that 7 days of contact time were optimal for removing pollutants in batik effluent