Assess the effectiveness of Heliconia Plant in the Phytoremediation of wastewater

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, K.S.R.M College of Engineering, Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, India.
² Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Vasavi College of India, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Published online: 3 August 2026

Abstract

The world is experiencing a significant increase in the need for freshwater due to the rapidly growing population and the loss of the global freshwater supply. As a result, the world faces a worldwide water crisis that makes it necessary to develop environmentally safer methods of wastewater treatment. Contamination from untreated sewage and waste products is greatly contributing to the global water crisis, thus impacting our freshwater sources and affecting human health. Conventional methods of treating sewage are costly and have a large negative impact on the environment. Phytoremediation is one eco-friendly, low-cost method of treating wastewater through the use of plants. Phytoremediation involves using living plants to remove and break down contaminants in soil, sediment, and water and therefore has a strong potential for the decontamination of the environment. In addition, phytoremediation has shown a tremendous ability to decontaminate the environment, indicating that now is truly the time to begin utilizing this green method towards creating a safer and cleaner environment. The selection of plants for the study was based on their cost-effectiveness, growth rate, and availability; they were tested using wastewater, and their efficacy over several days was then measured. The research investigates the effectiveness of Heliconia Plant (a type of flowering plant) at treating wastewater using phytoremediation techniques. Wastewater samples were collected over 12 days and analyzed every 3 days. Based on the results, the heliconia plants reduced pH, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), turbidity, alkalinity, chlorides, and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) by 3.8%, 28.3%, 86.6%, 84.6%, 22.2%, and 72.7%, respectively, over the course of the study. The study achieved reductions of greater than 50% in turbidity, alkalinity, and BOD, thus improving the overall quality of the wastewater.