Down regulating colour and toxicity of effluent using microaerophilic bioreactor

Abstract

Synthetic dye effluent is a major hazard to the surrounding environment. This hazardous condition is ineviTable but the regulation of decolourizing and detoxifying could be done using reactors. In this study we have designed a microaerophilic bioreactor which incorporates a microbial consortium of Pseudomonas stutzeri and Alcaligenes faecalis. We had used the effluent from microbiological labs from our university and we treated them at the range from 20ppm to 60ppm of Crystal Violet dye. Standardization of dye removal was done primarily in small scale and later implemented in a large scale setup. Characterization studies for adsorbent was done using SEM analysis to get the nature of the pore size. In this study we chose 40ppm and 60ppm of dye effluent to be treated in lab scale setup with adsorbent and adsorbent along with microbial consortium and the treated effluent was analysed using UV-Visible spectrophotometry at 579nm and the efficiency of the percentage of removal was observed to be 99.7% and 99.1% for 40ppm with adsorbent and adsorbent with consortium respectively. Similarly for 60ppm it shows 99.8% and 99.4% removal respectively. The experiment done in small scale bioreactor with 60ppm shows 99.8% and 99.6% removal with adsorbent and adsorbent along with consortium and also the highest removal is achieved at 8pH. The adsorption isotherm was also studied.