Phytotechnology for domestic wastewater treatment: Performance of Pistia stratiotes in eradicating pollutants and future prospects

Domestic wastewater contains various organic and inorganic substances that need to be treated using appropriate technology. Phytotechnology is one of the technologies that have high efficiency in removing contaminants. Thus, this study aims to analyze the potential of Pistia stratiotes, as a floating plant, in removing various contaminants in domestic wastewater. This research is carried out in a batch reactor. The range finding test (RFT) is conducted for 7 days with 0 %, 25 %, 50 %, 75 %, and 100 % (v/v) of domestic wastewater concentrations. Afterward, the highest concentration selected from RFT will be used as the basis to determine concentration variations in phytotreatment and tested for 14 days. The measured parameters are chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and phosphate (TP). The RFT result showed that P. stratiotes can survive up to 25 % (v/v) of domestic wastewater concentration. Based on RFT, 5 %, 10 %, 15 %, 20 %, and 25 % of domestic wastewater concentration will be used in phytotreatment. The result showed that P. stratiotes can remove COD, BOD, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and TP up to 99.8 %, 97.2 %, 46.4 %, 100 %, 100 %, and 80.4 %, respectively for 25 % (v/v) of domestic wastewater concentration. Meanwhile, in other concentrations, the efficiency removal for all parameters ranged from 13 %–99 %. This indicated that P. stratiotes is a potential phytotechnology agent for domestic wastewater treatment.