Phytoremediation Process of Water Spinach (Ipomoea aquatica) in Absorbing Heavy Metal Concentration in Wastewater

Heavy metals have become one of the environmental pollutants in water. To overcome this problem, the phytoremediation process was used as the method to cleanse polluted media. The objectives of the study are to determine the heavy metal accumulation by water spinach (Ipomea aquatica) in different types of heavy metal and to determine the level of heavy metal reduction in contaminated water. Ipomea aquatica was placed in containers that had solutions of different heavy metal concentrations. The selected heavy metals are cadmium (Cd), zinc (Zn), and copper (Cu), with a concentration of 5 ppm, 10 ppm, and 15 ppm, respectively. This study lasted about 20 days. Every four days, plant and water samples are collected. The plant samples were dried, digested, and analyzed by using ICP-OES. The two-way ANOVA statistical test was used to measure the differences in the amounts of the heavy metals accumulated in the plant and water. The accumulation of elements in plants shows a gradual increase in the uptake of cadmium, Cu, and Zn. Ipomea aquatica is suitable to take up cadmium, where the highest level of cadmium found was 13.99 mg/kg. On day 8, the level of heavy metals in the water gradually decreases for Cu and Zn. The presence of heavy metals in the water had decreased by 82.20 % on the last day of treatment. Ipomea aquatica accumulated more heavy metals while the number of heavy metals in the water decreased over a period of days. For all heavy metal types, significant differences in heavy metal concentration were obtained at p<0.05, showing that Ipomea aquatica can be used in the phytoremediation approach to remove heavy metals from wastewater.