Dry Biomass of the Amazonian Macrophyte Paspalun Repens for Evaluation as Adsorbent Material of Heavy Metals Zn and Cu

Abstract

The present work aims at the preliminary evaluation of the Paspalun repens macrophyte dry biomass adsorbent material of zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) metals from water. The diversity of Species is due to the extensive aquatic environment where it is inserted. The Paspalun repens species comes from the Buiuçu lake located in the region of Parintins-Amazonas- Brazil. The macrophyte was dried in a mill and then a digestion through biomass microwaves was done before and after its exposure to the solutions containing different concentrations of zinc and copper (1.00, 1.50, 2.00, 3.00 mg mL-1 of metals) for a period of 48 hours. As a source of the metals, zinc sulfate (ZnSO4 7H2O) for zinc, and copper sulfate (CuSO4 5H2O) for copper were used as the source. As a result, the efficiency of Paspalun repens was observed in the metals removal, the highest removal percentage, of 29.67 and 37.07% in the leaves, whereas in the root it was 25.25 and 32.84% (at the concentration 1.0 and 2.0 mg/mL consequently), was of zinc, therefore the dry biomass of this species can be considered as a low cost alternative material in the removal of these heavy metals, contributing to the improvement of water quality.

Keywords

• aquatic macrophyte
• heavy metals
• dry biomass