An experiment was performed under laboratory conditions to
compare the water hyacinth material’s phosphorus adsorption effect
of a treatment against the control. Each involved three replicates.
It lasted 20 day in February 2009, when the room
temperature varied between 15 and 20 C.
Deionized water (15 L) were spiked with 1.1524 g KH2PO4 (analytical
grade, Shantou Xilong Chemical Factory Co., Ltd.) to prepare
a stock solution of 17.50 mg P L1, which was considered the average
concentration of TP in directly discharged swine wastewater in
China (Dong et al., 2009). Six 5-L plastic tanks were filled with 2.5 L
stock solution each and separated into two groups for the tests.
In the treatment group, 50 g of the plant material was added to
each tank and submerged to be fully hydrated. They were turned
upside down and reversed every 24 h. The KH2PO4 solutions from
both groups were sampled every 48 h for TP determination by
means of GB 18596-2001, PRC. The estimated adsorbed phosphorus
was the difference between the amounts of the original TP
and the TP in the samples.