Assessing the Performance of Horizontally Flowing Subsurface Wetland Equipped With Vetiveria Zizanioides For the Treatment of Acid Mine Drainage

Contamination of different ecological spheres with acid mine drainage (amd)has raised numerous concerns in countries with well-developed miningindustries, thus calling for urgent intervention measures to redress theprevailing water pollution challenges. due to its chemical composition and(eco)-toxicological nature, amd can pose severe environmental damage if notproperly managed. herein, the performance of subsurface horizontally flowconstructed wetland (sshf-cw) equipped with vetiveria zizanioides for thetreatment of amd was explicitly assessed. to fulfill the goals of thisphytoremediation study, the experiments were administered for a period of 30days using authentic amd from an active gold mine; and the quality of thefeed and product water was monitored daily. the results showed a slightincrease in ph from 2.4 to 4.01 and a net reduction in electrical conductivity,total dissolved solids, and sulphate, registering ≥ 47.20%, ≥ 46.00%, and ≥33.04%, respectively. thenceforth, there was a net removal of metal in thefollowing order; zn (77.75%) ≥ fe (75.36%) ≥ mn (67.48%) ≥ al (55.05%) ≥ ni(44.01%) ≥ cu (11.36%). interestingly, the obtained results demonstrated thatvetiveria zizanioides was tolerant to amd with a tolerance index of 1.23 after30 days, while the removed metals were partitioned amongst the substrate,plant matrices, and external factors. chemical species accumulated by theplants were more concentrated in the roots except for mn, which was moreconcentrated in the shoots. the x-ray fluorescence and x-ray diffractometersanalyses revealed the presence of chemical species in the substrate, while fourier transform infrared and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersivespectroscopy analysis revealed the presence of chemical species in plants roots,confirming that substrate and plants play a huge role in pollutants removal. assuch, it can be concluded that sshf-cw equipped with vetiveria zizanioidesplays a major role in the removal of contaminants from amd and could beemployed in derelict mines or small operations as a passive treatmenttechnique to phyto-remediate mine effluents.