Biological wastewater treatment typically requires the use of bacteria for degradation of carbonaceous and nitrogenous compounds present in wastewater. The high lipid containing biomass can be used to extract oil and the contents can be termed as bio-oil (or biodiesel or myco-diesel after transesterification). The separate experiments were conducted on actual wastewater samples with 5% v/v inoculum of Mucor circinelloides MTCC1297 and Trichoderma reesei NCIM992 strains. The observed reductions in chemical oxygen demand (COD) were 88.72% and 86.75% in 96 hrs and the observed substrate based biomass yields were 0.21 mg VSS/mg COD and 0.22 mg VSS/mg COD for M. circinelloides reactor and for T. reesei reactor, respectively. The resulted bio-oil production from wastewater treatment by M. circinelloides and T. reesei reactors was 142.2 mg/L and 74.1 mg/L, whereas biomass containing bio-oil contents (%w/w) were 22.11% and 9.82%, respectively. In this experiment, the fungal wastewater treatment was also compared with conventional bacterial process with respect to specific growth rate, biomass production, and oil content. This study suggests that wastewater can be used as a potential feedstock for bio-oil production with the use of oleaginous fungal strains and which could be a possible route of waste to energy.

The aim of this work was to optimize the biodegradation of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) containing actual textile wastewater for a sustainable treatment solution. The isolated microbial consortia of effective PVA degrader namely Candida Sp. and Pseudomonas Sp., which were responsible for symbiotic degradation of chemical oxidation demand (COD) and PVA from desizing wastewater. In the process optimization, the maximum aeration was essential to achieve a high degradation rate, where as stirring enhances further degradation and foam control. Batch experiments concluded with the need of 16 lpm/l and 150 rpm of air and stirring speed respectively for high rate of COD and PVA degradation. Optimized process leads to 2 days of hydraulic retention time (HRT) with 85–90% PVA degradation. Continuous study also confirmed above treatment process optimization with 85.02% of COD and 90.3% of PVA degradation of effluent with 2 days HRT. This study gives environment friendly and cost effective solution for PVA containing textile wastewater treatment.

Compared with conventional wastewater treatment processes, membrane bioreactors (MBRs) offer several advantages including high biodegradation efficiency, excellent effluent quality and smaller footprint. However, it has some limitations on account of its energy intensive operation. In recent years, there has been growing interest in use of anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) due to their potential advantages over aerobic systems, which include low sludge production and energy generation in terms of biogas. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of a submerged AnMBR for the treatment of synthetic wastewater having 4,759 mg/l chemical oxygen demand (COD). The COD removal efficiency was over 95% during the performance evaluation study. Treated effluent with COD concentration of 231 mg/l was obtained for 25.5 hours hydraulic retention time. The obtained total organic carbon concentrations in feed and permeate were 1,812 mg/l and 89 mg/l, respectively. An average biogas generation and yield were 25.77 l/d and 0.36 m3/kg COD, respectively. Evolution of trans-membrane pressure (TMP) as a function of time was studied and an average TMP of 15 kPa was found suitable to achieve membrane flux of 12.17 l/(m2h). Almost weekly back-flow chemical cleaning of the membrane was found necessary to control TMP within the permissible limit of 20 kPa.

No abstract

A B S T R A C TAnaerobic, anoxic and aerobic environment can be simulated in the single stage sequential batch reactor (SBR) . Various design conditions viz., combinations of different phase time and different cycle time, hydraulic residence time (HRT), substrate loading rate, sludge age (SRT) and aeration time were analyzed for optimum biological treatment. The pilot runs were evaluated with the design conditions of food/microbe ratio (F/M) 0.2 per day and MLSS of 4950 mg/L. For the given design conditions 4, 5 and 6 hours cycle lengths were analyzed for their efficient performance with 30-33% of decant volume for sewage containing C:N:P of 100:8:2. Studies on 4 hours cycle resulted in the maximum overall organic and nutrient removal efficiency at SRT of 26 days and HRT of 12 hours. Efficient sequencing of reactions with respect to the simulated biological conditions in the pilot plant studies resulted in better oxygen recovery and low power consumption. Also, the enforced biological selector phase condition resulted in high microbial reaction rates for organic and nutrient removal. The removal efficiencies with 4 hours cycle time of COD, nitrogen (NH4-N) and phosphate (PO4-P) were 90, 92 and 78%, respectively. This study offers a potential option of low HRT nutrient removal SBR process.