Phytoremediation of Wastewater Containing Lead and Manganese Ions Using Algae

Loredana Ioana Diaconu; Cristina Ileana Covaliu-Mierlă; Oana Păunescu; Leon Dumitru Covaliu; Horia Iovu; Gigel Paraschiv

doi:10.3390/biology12060773

Phytoremediation of Wastewater Containing Lead and Manganese Ions Using Algae

Biology (Basel). 2023 May 26;12(6):773. doi: 10.3390/biology12060773.

Authors

Loredana Ioana Diaconu¹, Cristina Ileana Covaliu-Mierlă¹, Oana Păunescu¹, Leon Dumitru Covaliu¹, Horia Iovu², Gigel Paraschiv¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Biotechnical Systems Engineering, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 313 Splaiul Independentei, 060042 Bucharest, Romania.
² Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnologies, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 1-7 Gheorghe POLIZU Street, Sector 1, 011061 Bucharest, Romania.

Abstract

Heavy metal pollution of water from industrial discharge is a major problem worldwide. Thus, the quality of the environment and human health are severely affected. Various conventional technologies have been applied for water treatment, but these can be expensive, especially for industrial water treatment, and may have limited treatment efficiencies. Phytoremediation is a method that is successfully applied to remove metal ions from wastewater. In addition to the high efficiency of the depollution treatment, this method has the advantages of a low cost of the operation and the existence of many plants that can be used. This article presents the results of using algae (Sargassum fusiforme and Enteromorpha prolifera) to treat water containing manganese and lead ions. It was observed that maximum efficiencies for wastewater treatment were obtained when was used the algae Enteromorpha prolifera for a 600 min contact time period. The highest wastewater treatment efficiency obtained using Sargassum fusiforme was 99.46%.

Keywords: algae; heavy metal; phytoremediation; removal; wastewater.

Grants and funding

This work has been funded by the European Social Fund from the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Capital 2014–2020, through the Financial Agreement with the title “Training of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in order to acquire applied research skills-SMART”, Contract no. 13530/16 June 2022-SMIS code: 153734. The results presented in this article were funded by the Ministry of Investments and European Projects through the Human Capital Sectoral Operational Program 2014–2020, Contract no. 62461/3 June 2022, SMIS code 153735.