• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.79-87
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• 2014

The enrichment with nutrients in rivers and lakes becomes serious problems in Korea. As the environmental friendly solution, the phytoremediation are getting more attention and the water hyacinth could be a strong candidate plant for this. Water hyacinth is a free floating freshwater plant proven to be a effective plant used for a purification of a polluted lakes, sewage wastewater, and livestock wastewater. The biggest obstacles for application of water hyacinth in Korea could be the disposal of the water hyacinth before winter, because there is no feasible use for the water hyacinth until now. In this study, the characteristics of water hyacinth were deeply investigated for providing background data to develop appropriate application of the water hyacinth. The water hyacinth was fractioned three parts, leaf, air blader, root of which morphological properties were evaluated with microscope and field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM). The water contents of each parts of the water hyacinth were 87% for leaf, 96.5% for air bladder, 94.6% for root. The chemical compositions of each parts were also measured and showed around 29% of hot water extract in leaf and air bladder, 42% holocellulose for leaf, 47% holocellulose for air bladder. The application of water hyacinth biomass without root parts to papermaking provided bulkier structure, but the tensile strength was decreased.