EVALUATION OF THE EFFICIENCY OF TREATMENTS APPLIED TO VINASSE TO OPTIMIZE THE PHYTORREMEDIATION PROCESS

TABERNERO NOELIA ROMINA; CHOCOBAR PONCE SILVANA; RUIZ CUELLAR MELINA; PRADO CAROLINA DEL VALLE; ROSA MARIANA DANIELA

Tafi del Valle

Jornada; XXXIX ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC MEETING; 2022

Asociación de Biología de Tucumán

During the process of obtaining ethanol, a residual liquid called vinasse is generated, whose physical-chemical characteristics make it a potential contaminant to the water resources where it is dumped. For this reason, it is important to investigate for treatments to reduce its contaminant load, allowing its subsequent use and/or discharge. The combination of clean technologies, such as adsorption mediated by agro-industrial waste and phytoremediation, is an alternative with a great potential to improve the effluent quality. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of different bioadsorption schemes in vinasse, on the phytoremediation process with the species Salvinia rotundifolia. For the bioadsorption process, lemon and peanut shells, pretreated with NaOH and HCl, was combined in a batch system. Then, a known weight of plants was placed in plastic containers with treated and untreated vinasse for 10 days. Soluble phenols (CP), sucrose, reducing sugars, conductivity, and pH of the vinasse were quantified before and after the phytoremediation process. The treatment with pH adjusted to 6 turned out to be the most efficient, since it decreased the content of sugars and the conductivity in the effluent, without causing the death of the plant. The CP did not decrease significantly, and the pH increased, in the presence of the plant. Thus, we can infer that the use of plant biomass modified with NaOH in a basic medium can be a viable alternative for the primary treatment of vinasse, since it improves the characteristics of the effluent, making it more suitable for phytoremediation.