THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL AND FORESTRY KHUZAIMAH KHOIRUNNISA INVESTIGATING THE POTENTIAL OF FLOATING PLANT RAFT USING PEACE LILY (SPATHIPHYLLUM) IN SURFACE WATER TREATMENT OF ARTIFICIAL POND MASTER THESIS Study mode: Full-time Major: Environmental Science Faculty: Advanced Education Program Batch: 2021-2023 Thai Nguyen, 21/08/2023 Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry DegreeProgram Master of Environmental Science Student name Khuzaimah Khoirunnisa Student ID DTN21CH311023 Thesis Title Investigating the Potential of Floating Plant Raft Using Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum) in Surface Water Treatment of Artificial Pond. Nguyen Thi Ha Supervisor’s Signature Abstract: The pollution in public water bodies (river, lake, and ocean), such as runoff from domestic and agricultural activities, manufacturer, illegal dumping, or oil refinery has been a concern to researchers. Artificial pond in the environment of Advanced Education Program office in Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry is also included as the public water bodies due to several use including aesthetic view and runoff storage. The pollutants precipitated in water bodies can damage the underwater life and lead to eutrophication and the pollutants also lead to health concern once exposed to source of drinking water.
The presented study was designed to observe the potential of floating raft/floating treatment wetlands with different number of plant number to decontaminate the pollutants from artificial pond at the laboratory scale. This study concludes that floating treatment wetlands are suitable to treat wastewater due to the efficiency and simplicity in the design. The utilization of peace lily (Spathiphyllum) in remediating the pollutants is efficient, although the number of plants planted does not show any further significant result based on ANOVA test. The number of plants is divided by 5 stems and 3 stems in each media planted which remarks as i T1 for 5 stems and T2 for 3 stems.
The removal efficiency of T1 and T2 reaches 61.25% for nitrite, 52 and 33.07 and 9% for TSS, meanwhile for ammonium and total phosphorus, the removal efficiency is lower than the minimum standard. The removal efficiency seems low since the remediation process only relied on the activity in rhizosphere. Further study should be applied with bacterial inoculation or substrate addition and on-site treatment to the pond. Floating plant raft, polluted pond water, rhizosphere, water Keywords: treatment Number of pages: 86 water treatment.
Date of 21/8/2023 Submission: ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to praise Allah SWT, the almighty god for proving me this opportunity, strength, encouragement to proceed this journey successfully. This journey and thesis would not have been possible without his blessings. My praise to prophet Muhammad SAW, who has guided me to the right path blessed by the Lord. There are a lot of people I would like to send my gratitude due to their contribution to my thesis.
My appreciation to all of them for being part of this journey and make my master journey possible. Special appreciation to my supervisor, Assoc. Nguyen Thi Ha, for her never-ending academic support, valuable advices, and attention to every detail of this thesis. I got abundant insight and deep knowledge from her on water treatment, remediation, and water management techniques.
I would like to thank to all staffs in Centre for Natural Resources and Environmental Monitoring, Thai Nguyen Department of Natural Resources and Environment for their guidance and help to conduct the research. I am also very grateful to all my lecturers for the mentoring and classes which truly beneficial for me, I obtained so many new lessons in every class I attended. I deliver my gratitude to all Advanced Education Program staffs that always help me in both daily and my academic stuffs. I would like to deliver my gratitude also to Dr.
Endo Argo Kuncoro, Mr. Rahmad Hari Purnomo, Dr. Ari Hayati, Prof. Daniel Saputra, and Ms.
Lan Phuong for their guidance during the scholarship and campus application. I have many insight and valuable stories that encourage me to pursue this master and to make me believe in myself. I also deliver my gratitude to my friends in Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry, especially for master of environmental science batch K29 for the memories iii and making this journey more delightful. Many thanks to students in Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry for sharing the stories and projects with me.
My special thanks to The Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) scholarship program for financial support to my thesis and tremendous support to my life in Vietnam. This project would not have been successful without this funding and support. Last but not least, the special gratitude goes to my family. Words cannot describe how thankful I am to my parents for their never-ending prayers, love, support, care, and trust throughout my entire life.
To my husband to be, Martin Oktavianes, STP, thank you for being patient waiting for me and cheering me up in my master journey. I dedicate this thesis to everyone who reads this, to my beloved family, and to my future children and generation! Thai Nguyen, July 4th, 2023 Khuzaimah Khoirunnisa iv Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. iii Table of Contents. v List of Figures.
vii List of Tables. Research questions and hypothesis. The use of floating plant raft system in surface water treatment and natural water quality improvement. In Indonesia and Vietnam.
Factors affect floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) performance. The environmental conditions. Ornamental plants for water treatment. Advantages and disadvantages of using floating plant raft system.
RESEARCH OBJECTS AND METHODS. Efficiency of suspended solid removal. Efficiency of organic removal (COD). Efficiency of nitrogen removal.
Efficiency of total phosphorus removal. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION. The absence of substrate. The role of roots.
70 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Floating mat in laboratory scale. Batch experiment for floating wetlands. Canna indica in floating wetlands.
Typha latifolia from Mongolia. The artificial pond for water sampling. Diagram of experiment set up procedure .The roots of peace lily. TSS removal efficiency of floating treatment wetlands.
The example of filtered solids in TSS analysis. COD removal efficiency of floating treatment wetlands. The removal efficiency of ammonium test in floating treatment wetlands. Ammonium analysis procedure .The visual of color exchange in ammonium experiment.
The example of experiment T1 and T2. The removal efficiency of nitrite test in floating treatment wetlands .The example of color changing in nitrite experiment. 48 vii List of Tables Table 1. The input water based on standard.
The characteristic of peace lily. ANOVA table for TSS in the water sample after 5 days of treatment. ANOVA table for COD in the water sample after 5 days of treatment. ANOVA table for ammonium in the water sample after 5 days of treatment.
ANOVA table for nitrite in the water sample after 5 days of treatment. Research rationale The water ecosystems have been under pressure due to the global climate change and anthropogenic activities (deforestation, land use change, expansion of agriculture and development of industry, urbanization, and wastewater production) (Paerl et al. The urban population relates to water resource utilization and lead to increase in wastewater discharge, for example, 1% increase in the urban population leads to 0.925% increase in total water resource utilization (Wang, 2020; Wen et al.Besides the total of water utilization, the quality of water also depends on both natural and human influences. The natural factors influence water quality in the way of evapotranspiration, deposition of dust and salt by wind, natural leaking of organic matter and nutrients from soil, and biological processes in the aquatic environment.
On the other side, human activities from rural and urban areas play role in water quality in the form of sewage discharge, industrial discharge, and agricultural run-off. The lack of awareness among the users, quality of sanitation, and disposal need to be considered as the aspect of water resource management. The human activities or known as anthropogenic factors affect the water quality in order to fulfil the needs for human’s daily life. Animal husbandry as the branch of agriculture produces the waste from animal raising activities in the form of food waste and manure which may contain pathogens such as E.
Coli, hormones, antibiotics, nutrients (nitrates, phosphorus, and ammonium), and heavy metals. The contaminants from this activity can pollute the surface water through run-off and affect the drinking water wells and water systems though groundwater (CDC, 2022). However, the environmental impact of aquaculture 1 also depends on the species, the process of production, and the location of farm. The initial intention of fish farming is to increase the food system.
However, the environmental problems are following behind. The problems are linked to the nutrient, effluents, and environmental degradation due to the location of ponds. The waste from fish has potential to pollute the surrounding area and tends to deplete the oxygen in water, create algal blooms, and dead zones (GSA, 2019). Hence, the water management practices (mainly to remove chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total phosphorus (TP), heavy metals, and other contaminants/pollutants must be conducted to improve the water quality and to sustain the water utility (Bao & Chen, 2015; Bao & Zou, 2017; Ma et al., 2016; Zhao et al.
The water management practices include the water usage reduction and wastewater recycling for several purposes (Adams, 2021). The practice of wastewater recycling includes the wastewater treatment approaches, the wastewater can be recycled to reuse or discharged to environment without harming the surrounding area. One of the solutions to recycle wastewater is constructed wetlands. Constructed wetlands are the organic wastewater treatment systems that effectively purify the wastewater.
The concept of constructed wetlands relies on the aquatic plants, natural microorganisms, and a substrate (sand, soil, or gravel). Constructed wetlands are normally used for secondary or tertiary phase of wastewater treatment. The natural components and affordable costs make this practice seems comfortable to use. The collaboration of water plants, microorganisms and substrate to filter the contaminants in wastewater will advance the possibility to remove the contaminants (CSE, 2022).
Several designs exist in constructed wetlands system, for example, floating wetlands 2 (floating plant raft) that use floating mats and plants that can be planted in a pilot scale system to treat multiple kinds of wastewater. The components in constructing the floating treatment wetlands play important role in the remediation process, one of the most important factors is the selection of plant used, the speed in remediation process and the support from the appearance of the plant itself can promote the goal of floating treatment wetlands in public spaces. In order to achieve successful treatment of floating treatment wetlands, the use of ornamental plants can be considered. As mentioned by Zanin et al., (2018), FTWs have multi purposes of improving the quality of treated water and the potency to adorn the appearance of the water bodies through the aesthetic-ornamental values within the plants.
According to Barco and Borin (2020a), there are four criteria of constructing appealing floating wetlands, such as: 1). the selection of plants with colourful flowers, 2). the mixture of different plant species with colored flowers, different blooming time is preferable, 3). the use of species with broad aesthetic characteristics (the color of leaves, shape, the motif, etc), or 4).
the use of plants which can maintain the green coverage of floating mats. Thus, the purpose of plant species to enhance the water purification and ornamental look has been acknowledged in floating treatment wetlands. In this study, the efficiency of peace lily (Spathiphyllum) which is an ornamental plant in surface water treatment of artificial pond using floating plant raft is tested. Peace lily is well-know is beautiful hybrid plant with white flower that people commonly put inside the house of Vietnamese, planted with soil, whereas, this plant is also applicable to put on the water.