The performance of isolated designed consortia comprising Bacillus pumilus, Brevibacterium sp, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa for the treatment of sewage wastewater in terms of reduction in COD (chemical oxygen demand), BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) MLSS (mixed liquor suspended solids), and TSS (total suspended solids) was studied. Different parameters were optimized (inoculum size, agitation, and temperature) to achieve effective results in less period of time. The results obtained indicated that consortium in the ratio of 1 : 2 (effluent : biomass) at 200 rpm, 35°C is capable of effectively reducing the pollutional load of the sewage wastewaters, in terms of COD, BOD, TSS, and MLSS within the desired discharge limits, that is, 32 mg/L, 8 mg/L, 162 mg/L, and 190 mg/L. The use of such specific consortia can overcome the inefficiencies of the conventional biological treatment facilities currently operational in sewage treatment plants.

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Small-scale agro-based pulp and paper mills are characterized as highly polluting industries. These mills use Kraft pulping process for paper manufacturing due to which toxic lignified chemicals are released into the environment. Lack of infrastructure, technical manpower, and research and development facilities restricts these mills to recover these chemicals. Therefore, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the emanating stream is quite high. For solving the above problem, four bacteria were isolated from the premises of agro-based pulp and paper mill which were identified as species ofPseudomonas, Bacillus, Pannonibacter, andOchrobacterum. These bacteria were found capable of reducing COD up to 85%–86.5% in case of back water and 65-66% in case of back water : black liquor (60 : 40), respectively, after acclimatization under optimized conditions (pH 6.8, temperature 35°C, and shaking 200 rpm) when the wastewater was supplemented with nitrogen and phosphorus as trace elements.

Wastewaters from pulp and paper mills are highly toxic and around 250 xenobiotic compounds have been reported in the effluents. Tannic acid degrading bacterium, Enterobacter sp. was isolated from soil by tannic acid enrichment. This isolate was used for bioremediation of pulp and paper mill effluents. Parameters like temperature, agitation, inoculum size and treatment duration were optimized by using Qualiteck-4 software. Reduction in lignin 73% and colour up to 82% was also observed. Encouraging results were observed is reduction of COD, BOD with 16-h retention time in batch culture.

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BOD (Biochemical oxygen demand) is the pollution index of any water sample. One of the main factors influencing the estimation of BOD is the nature of microorganisms used as seeding material. In order to meet the variation in wastewater characteristics, one has to be specific in choosing the biological component that is the seeding material. The present study deals with the estimation of BOD of dairy wastewater using a specific microbial consortium and compares of the results with seeding material (BODSEED). Bacterial strains were isolated from 5 different sources and were screened by the conventional BOD method. The selected microbial seed comprises of Enterobacter sp., Pseudomonas sp. BOD : COD (Chemical oxygen demand) ratio using the formulated seed comes in the range of 0.7-0.8 whereas that using BODSEED comes in the ratio of 0.5-0.6. The ultimate BOD (UBOD) was also performed by exceeding the 3-day dilution BOD test. After 90 days, it has been observed that the ratio of BOD : COD increased in case of selected consortium 7 up to 0.91 in comparison to 0.74 by BODSEED. The results were analyzed statistically by t-test and it was observed that selected consortium was more significant than the BODSEED.