Utilisation of free floating macrophytes for milk process unit wastewater treatment

With the rapid growth of industrialization, water pollution has increased tremendously. The inadequate wastewater management seriously affects the environment; phytoremediation provides a low cost alternative for the waste management. Most of the waste water discharged into water bodies, disturbs the ecological balance and deteriorates the water quality. Phytoremediation provides the low cost eco-friendly method for the wastewater treatment. These are frequently in use by the large scale organisations for the treatment of the wastewater of choice. These artificial wastewater treatment systems consisting of macrophytes are dependent upon various processes like microbial, biological, physical and chemical process for the treatment of the effluent. For the current study free floating aquatic macrophytes Lemna sp. and Eichornia sp. were used to treat the effluents from dairy factory, the biological oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand of dairy effluent were reduced significantly after treatment with phytoremediation experiments.