Bioremoval of a triphenylmethane dye, Malachite Green, from contaminated water by duckweed Azolla filiculoides

World population increasing needs to various industries, have led to the accumulation of a wide variety of contaminates in the environment and natural resources. Synthetic dyes have been widely used in many industries such as textile, paper, tannery, food and pharmacy. The effluent discharge from these industries has destructive effects on the environment. Therefore, it has always been needful to find economic methods for treatment of dye contaminated waters. Concurrent with the development of biological methods, the use of plants, in other words, phytoremediation, has emerged as a cheap and eco-friendly clean up method. The present study was carried out to investigate the potential of duckweed Azolla filiculoides for bioremediation of Malachite Green (MG) solution. Our results obtained from batch experiments showed the notable ability of the plant species in biological degradation of MG. The reusability of the plant in long-term repetitive operations was also confirmed. The decolorization efficiency was dependent on different operational parameters such as initial dye concentration, reaction time, pH and amount of plant. The results showed that the biological decolorization efficiency decreased with increasing initial MG concentration and also this bioremediation increased as the reaction time, pH and amount of plant increasing. The batch experiments results, revealed the ability of duckweed Azolla filiculoides in biological degradation of Malachite Green up to 99% from waste waters.

Keywords:

Phytoremediation , Biodegradation , Bioremoval , Malachite Green , wastewater treatment , Azolla filiculoides