The effect of pH and temperature to water hyacinth in removing heavy metals in water / Siti Zulaikha Muhamad Sukor

Water hyacinth is a plant that are easy to get with low cost and proved effective by recent researchers. This study used phytoremediation process which water hyacinth plant tested to remove heavy metals element in water. Analyzing of heavy metals concentration were using machine Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer Brand Agilent 240 AA. The purposes of this study are evaluation of percentage removal of Pb and Mn by water hyacinth in water, to analyze the affinity of water hyacinth towards absorption of Pb and Mn, further to assess the effect of pH and temperature with removal of Pb and Mn. The result showed a significant difference between three different pH with percentage removal of both heavy metals Pb (p= 0.024) while Mn (p= 0.001). Water hyacinth plant have higher percentage removal of heavy metals for both heavy metals. Besides that, result showed that there is a significant difference (p= 0.009) which indicates that water hyacinth has more tendency to remove heavy metal Pb compared to heavy metal Mn with average difference in concentration Pb is 4.07 ppm which higher than Mn which is 0.54 ppm. From correlation test, it is found that only pH has significantly reducing the difference in concentration for Pb and Mn with rs= 0.837, p= 0.038 and rs= 0.956, p= 0.003 respectively. When pH level increase, the difference in concentration for Pb and Mn also increase. This showed that removing of heavy metals in water is more effective when heavy metals solution reacts with higher pH. Temperature does not affect in this study (p= 0.326) for Pb,(p= 1.000) for Mn. For recommendation, further study on others heavy metals should be done to compare the results to improve the study.