Role of White Rot Fungi in Industrial Wastewater Treatment: A Review

Abstract

White Rot Fungi (WRF) are a class of microorganisms widely understood for their ability to breakdown an extensive range of pollutants generally found in industrial wastewater. This specific literature review centers on the abilities of the White Rot Fungi to treat industrial wastewater, analysis of the biodegradation mechanism, future applications, and scaling up for practical implementation. WRF usually carry out the degradation process with ligninolytic enzyme by targeting complex industrial pollutants, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, dyes, pharmaceuticals, and products of personal care. The unique enzymatic system of WRF converts the complex and harmful industrial pollutants into harmless end and byproducts, thus minimizing the impact on the environment and ecosystem. This review paper also discusses the potential applications of WRF, such as bioremediation, biosorption, and co-culturing with bacteria to enhance the pollutants removal efficiency of already functional wastewater treatment plants. However, there are still challenges in scaling up WRF-based treatment facilities due to factors such as the optimization of conditions and processes of already functional conventional wastewater treatment plants, cost effectiveness, and design modifications of treatment facilities. Conclusively, WRF fungi can play an important role in degrading complex organic and inorganic pollutants specifically, which are not usually treated by conventional wastewater treatment plants.

Filamentous Fungi as Bioremediation Agents of Industrial Effluents: A Systematic Review

“…Their significant production of extracellular enzymes such as peroxidases, laccases, and phenol oxidases enables the effective reduction of phenolic compounds into simpler, less ecotoxic molecules [23][24][25]. Studies have underscored the remarkable potential of white-and brown-rot fungi in phenol reduction, achieving the removal of up to 100% of phenolic forms in industrial effluents [26,27].…”

White Rot Fungi as Tools for the Bioremediation of Xenobiotics: A Review

“…Furthermore, the sorption of pollutants into activated carbon, carbon nanotubes and fullerene have been used for the treatment of polluted wastewater [ 14 ]. Even though it has been demonstrated that these techniques are efficient, they have disadvantages, such as the generation of harmful byproducts, the accumulation of high volumes of residuals and high costs [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], consequently restraining their application in environmental remediation [ 18 ].…”

“…In particular, white rot fungi (WRF), as organisms living on wood, have evolved to degrade major wood polymers, including lignin. Due to the broad substrate range of their ligninolytic enzymes, WRF are exceptional microorganisms that show extraordinary capacities to degrade a widespread range of lignin-related compounds such as xenobiotics, including synthetic dyes, polychlorinated biphenyls, organophosphate pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [ 5 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”

Water Quality Assessment and Decolourisation of Contaminated Ex-Mining Lake Water Using Bioreactor Dye-Eating Fungus (BioDeF) System: A Real Case Study

“…Water treatment using fungal technology, also called mycoremediation, is an alternative treatment to water treatment using biological processes, specifically bacterial, due to limitations in removing all pollutants simultaneously [ 13 ]. Mycoremediation offers extensive removal of pollutants, such as heavy metals [ 14 ], antibiotics [ 15 ], dyes [ 16 ], aromatic hydrocarbons [ 17 ], organic materials, and non-organic pollutants [ 18 ], due to varying mechanistic properties.…”