Effect of substrates on the potential of Phragmites australis to accumulate and translocate selected contaminants from landfill leachate

Abstract

The choice of constructed wetlands substrate is a very important issue, there is still a lack of studies that analyse the effect of different types of substrate on the efficiency of the accumulate and translocate contaminants from landfill leachate. Therefore, the objectives of study were to evaluate the effect of substrate on the potential of Phragmites australis to accumulate and translocate selected contaminants from leachate. The lowest translocation was recorded for Fe and Cu, and the highest for K and Ni. Translocation between root and shoots for most parameters (total Kjeldahl nitrogen, total phosphorus, K and Mn) was high (TF > 1.0). However, for Fe, Cu, Cr and Ni translocation was low in most variants (TF < 1.0). Only for Cr there were statistically significant differences between the substrates. The obtained bioaccumulation factor values for Cu, Cr and Ni show that P.australis does not have a good ability to phytoaccumulate heavy metals from leachate.

Keywords

• Phytoremediation
• Verftical flow constructed wetlands (VFCW)
• Landfill leachate
• Phragmites australis