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Role of Phycoremediation to Remove Heavy Metals from Sewage Water: Review Article

2018; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3923/jest.2019.1.9

2077-2181

Harneet Kaur, Anita Rajor, Amritpal Singh Kaleka,

Environmental remediation with nanomaterials

Sewage water has enrichment of many plant nutrients, so it can be used for irrigation purposes.Nevertheless, if sewage water uses for irrigation without any pre-treatment, with the passage of time toxic contaminants like heavy metals get accumulated into soil and transformed from soil to crops and vegetables.Ultimately, they enter into food chain.Long-term exposure of these heavy metals to human body can have fatal effects because most of the heavy metals are carcinogenic.To overcome the problem of accumulation of heavy metals, bioremediation is the one of the best technique to remove toxic contaminants from sewage water.Use of algae for bioremediation is known as phycoremediation.This review was aimed to study the role of phycoremediation for the removal of heavy metals from sewage water.In this study, different techniques used in phycoremediation were compiled, ability of some micro and macroalgae species of algae to absorb various heavy metals were reviewed.Some factors like temperature, pH and concentration of contaminants which may affect the efficacy of phycoremediation were also observed.On the basis of literature reviewed in this article, it was concluded that phycoremediation is an eco-friendly technique in which algae is used to remove heavy metals from wastewater.This technique is cost effective, ecofriendly as compare to other techniques.In phycoremediation no hazardous secondary byproducts are produced.So, this technique can be explored as a good tool for reduction of water pollution.The wastewater algae can also utilized for biofuel production.