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Water Pollution Management Using Eichhornia Crassipes (Water Hyacinth)
Summary
Researchers found that a floating plant called water hyacinth can soak up harmful pollutants—including excess nutrients and heavy metals like iron and nickel—from river water contaminated by animal waste and slaughterhouse runoff, cleaning it up within about three weeks. This matters because polluted waterways like this can breed harmful bacteria and toxins that affect drinking water and food safety for nearby communities, so planting this low-cost, natural plant along riverbanks could offer a simple way to protect water quality where industrial regulation is limited.
In this study, Eichhornia crassipes (water hyacinth) was used to remove excess nutrients from polluted water. 5 litres of wastewater was collected in plastic containers in 3 stations from the river at the mixing points of sewage and other waste materials in the downstream, midstream and upstream positions. These were analyzed in the laboratory to determine the most polluted area of the river (table 1). About 20 litres of water was collected from Atabong river in Eket, adjudged to be rich in nutrients due to the discharge of animal dung, tissues, blood, waste foods, decayed vegetation, rotten bones, pesticides and sewage material from the proliferation of Abattoirs around the river banks. The water collected was emptied into a 20L rubber basin and water hyacinth was planted in it at the demonstration site as shown (fig 2). Young Water hyacinth was collected from a drainage at Uyo and taken to Akwa Ibom State University, Ikot Akpaden where they were planted in a container containing 15 litres of polluted water taken from Atabong River. Water from the downstream was used for the planting because it was observed that it was to be the most pollute (table 1). The results revealed that water hyacinth, (Eichhornia crassipes) plants absorbed excess nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate, silicate and also heavy metals (iron, nickel and vanadium) from the polluted in water twenty-one days after they were planted (figs.4-7). If Water hyacinth is planted at the riverbanks where activities that could pollute the water bodies are carried out, it could absorb these pollutants especially the excess nutrients that are capable of causing dead zones as a result of eutrophication in the freshwater bodies.