Simultaneous adsorption and biodegradation of reactive dyes using jatropha deoiled cakes

Abstract

Endemic pollution problems due to discharge of wastewaters are affecting all the aspects of human life. The poor quality effluents coming from industries is destroying the fragile ecosystem, leading to various apprehensions amongst researchers and scientific communities. Treatment of wastewaters have become an urgent need of the society, which cannot be ignored. Incineration, absorption on solid matrices and biological treatment are some of the effluent treatment methods available. These methods, however, have their own disadvantages. This work explores the application of jatropha deoiled cakes on the concurrent adsorption and biological degradation of reactive dyes. Reactive blue, reactive yellow, reactive red were used for the experiments. The combined experiments were tested for effect of glucose concentrations as well as initial concentrations. Glucose concentrations of 1 g/l, 2 g/l and 3 g/l were taken. All the dyes were varied from 100 ppm to 600 ppm. It was observed that combined degradation yielded higher degradation compared to biological degradation alone. The degradation rate varied with the variation of glucose concentration and it also varied with the initial concentration.