COMPARISION OF PHYTOREMEDIATION WITH BIOREMEDIATION FOR

ATRAZINE REMOVAL FROM WASTE WATER

FOR FULL PAPER

Postal address:

M.SURESH KARTHIK KUMAR,

PURE ENVIRO ENGG PVT LTD,

SHENOY NAGAR 2 MAIN ROAD ,

ND

CHENNAI 30

E mail:kareshmkumar@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Atrazine, a toxic pesticide, that doesn’t degrade easily like other pesticide. Sun light and

evaporation do not reduce its presence. They will bind to some soil particles, but generally tends

to leach to ground water. Its short-term effects are to potentially cause the following health

effects when people are exposed to it at levels above the MCL of 3 pots per billion (ppb) 1 for

relatively short periods of time like congestion of heart, lungs and kidneys; low blood pressure;

muscle spasms; weight loss; damage to adrenal glands and its long-term effects are the potential

to cause the following effects from a lifetime exposure at levels above the MCL such as weight

loss, cardiovascular damage, retinal and some muscle degeneration; cancer1. Effects on aquatic

organisms is slightly toxic to fish and other aquatic life and accumulates in the brain, gall

bladder, liver, and gut6. Keeping this in view, an attempt is made to study the removal efficiency
of atrazine from contaminated water through phytoremediation and bioremediation techniques

and to identify the efficient technique. In order to accomplish this, test microbes are isolated

from the root of vasa plant and the same vasa plant is used for performing the phytoremediation

technique. Then for that efficient technique a pictorial model is performed using AMOS

software.

Keywords: vasa plant, pH, temperature, concentration, modeling, Atrazine, phytoremediation,

bioremediation.

INTRODUCTION

Pesticides being used in agricultural tracts are released into the environment and come

into human contact directly or indirectly, results in acute and chronic health problems. Many

common farm and household products may be classified as hazardous. These wastes, if

improperly used, degraded or disposed of can be harmful to human and animal health and can

contaminate ground and surface water. Minimizing the amounts of hazardous products in

households and on farms, along with practicing proper use and degrading methods, can reduce

health risk, financial liability and potential ground and surface water contamination. Atrazine (2-

chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-1,3,5-triazine). Both soil organic matter and clay

minerals are effective sorbents for atrazine. The treatment of environmental problems through

biological means is known as bioremediation and the specific use of plants is known as

phytoremediation. Atrazine is one of the toxic pesticides that are found frequently in ground

water. The main objective of the present study is to remove atrazine from water to a maximum

efficiency. For this atrazine is subjected to phytoremediation i.e. removal by using a plant and to
bioremediation i.e. subjecting it to microbial degrading. The efficiencies from both the technique

is compared to derive an efficient technique that remove Atrazine to a maximum

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The results are shown in figures 3 to 5. Figure 3 shows the colonies of microorganism isolated

from sweet flags root and figure5 shows the species responsible for atrazine degradation. They

are isolated through a series of procedure. The table 1 to 5 shows the degradation result for

bioremediation for different pH. Table 6 shows the atrazine removal result through

phytoremediation. They are obtained by the graph got by HPLC analysis.

CONCLUSION

The degradation of atrazine is about 80% from bioremediation technique and 23% from

phytoremediation. Bioremediation technique is effective in removing atrazine. By using the

experimental data from bioremediation a pictoral model is performed using AMOS