Abstract:
Vascular aquatic plants like water hyacinth and salvinia, which are otherwise known as weeds, have been proved effective as bioagents for treating municipal and some types of industrial wastewaters. The technology is essentially labour intensive and energy-saving with lower overall costs than conventional treatment systems. In these respects this technology is appropriate for the third world but whereas the initiative for aquatic plant based waste treatment system has historically come from orient, the lead in this area has at present been taken by USA and Europe. The present report which describes the Asian initiative for aquatic-plant based wastewater treatment systems in the background of global state-of-art comes at a time when there is a lull in the Indian efforts in the field.
