Biodegradation of pulp and paper mill effluent by co-culturing ascomycetous fungi in repeated batch process

Abstract

The competence of novel fungal consortium, consisting of Nigrospora sp. LDF00204 (accession no. KP732542) and Curvularia lunata LDF21 (accession no. KU664593), was investigated for the treatment of pulp and paper mill effluent. Fungal consortium exhibited enhanced biomass production under optimized medium conditions, i.e., glucose as carbon (C), sodium nitrate as nitrogen (N), C/N 1.5:0.5, pH 5, temperature 30 °C, and agitation 140 rpm, and significantly reduced biochemical oxygen demand (85.6%), chemical oxygen demand (80%), color (82.3%), and lignin concentration (76.1%) under catalytic enzyme activity; however, unutilized ligninolytic enzymes, such as laccase (Lac), manganese peroxidase (MnP), and lignin peroxidase (LiP), were observed to be 13.5, 11.4, and 9.4 U/ml after the third cycle of effluent treatment in repeated batch process. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of fungal consortium revealed their compatibility through intermingled hyphae and spores, while the FTIR spectra confirmed the alteration of functional groups ensuring structural changes during the effluent treatment. Gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) analysis showed the reduction of complex compounds and development of numerous low-molecular-weight metabolites, such as 1-3-dimethyl benzene, 2-chloro-3-methyl butane, pentadecanoic acid, and 1-2-benzene dicarboxylic acid, during the treatment, demonstrating the massive potential of the novel fungal consortium to degrade recalcitrant industrial pollutants.

Microbial Consortia Are Needed to Degrade Soil Pollutants

“…The synergistic effect of the co-culture was also consistent with the reverse transcription-quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) results of the bmoX gene because compared to the monoculture, the expression of this gene was detected to increase during the vegetative growth period, which indicates that the nutrient interaction up-regulated bmoX [47]. The bacterial consortium was able to greatly improve the butane degradation efficiency and showed the great potential of this new consortium in the degradation of refractory industrial pollutants [47,49].…”

Isolation and characterization of lignin-degrading bacterium Bacillus aryabhattai from pulp and paper mill wastewater and evaluation of its lignin-degrading potential

“…The spectrum in the region of 1250-900 cm −1 referred to the stretching frequencies for cyclic ethers. The stretching of C-S linkage was observed in the region of 700-600 cm −1 , whereas brominated compounds was appeared in the range 600-500 cm −1 in infrared band region (Rajwar et al 2017;Muruganantham et al 2009).…”

Effect of continuous and intermittent electric current on lignin wastewater treatment and microbial community structure in electro-microbial system

“…Lignin peroxidase (LiP) activity in activated sludge was determined according to Rajwar et al . 56 . The viability and changes of bacterial cellular permeability in activated sludge were analyzed by fluorescent staining using a LIVE/DEAD BacLight Bacterial Viability Kit (Invitrogen Molecular Probes, USA) 9 .…”