ABSTRACT

Industries are producing a lot waste in the form of liquid effluents as a result of the rapid development in industrialization and ground-breaking technical innovations. The use of Duckweed (Lemna minor) was used as an alternative to phytoremediate fishpond water in this study.  A batch procedure was used to conduct the adsorption study for this experiment. Heavy metals like Zinc(Zn), Cadmium(Cd), Copper(Cu) and Lead(Pb) were investigated and analyzed. Standard analytical methods and procedures were employed in monitoring the parameters of focus. While the removal efficiencies of Zn, Cd, Cu and Pb were monitored for 5-weeks. The adsorption isotherms were used to test obtained results for best-fit.

The results showed reduction efficiencies after 5 weeks of Zn, Cd, Cu and Pb were 69.17%, 92.80%, 68.07%, 80.31% respectively for wastewater from fishpond with Duckweed plant as bio-accumulator. While for pH, Color, Turbidity, TSS, TDS, DO, COD, BOD, Electrical Conductivity were (6.62, 5.14), (780, 101), (137, 40), (101, 16), (100.7, 31.8), (0.0, 0.7), (1280, 483), (80.6, 10.8) and (190, 60). The R²value for bothLangmuir and Freundlich isotherms were 0.9945 and 0.5715 respectively. The value of the separation factor (R_L) for the treated wastewater was (R_L=1), for Langmuir isotherm. The implies that adsorption of heavy metals was linear and the adsorption isotherm is a straight line. While for Freundlich, Adsorption capacity (K_F) and adsorption capacity (n) were 14.8 and 21.32 respectively. Since n > 1, this implies that the adsorption is a beneficial adsorption.