Synergistic use of plant microbe system for pollutant removal

Abstract

The textile dye industry wastewater is one of the major contributors of to the pollution of water bodies. The wastewater contains many harmful chemicals, many of which are non-degradable. Untreated textile dye wastewater, or improperly treated water, discharged onto land and into water bodies, lead to water pollution, and affect flora, fauna and ecosystem. The dye containing wastewater cause many health hazards (from skin irritation to cancer) to the humans. There are many conventional treatment methods, such as adsorption, coagulation, filtration, advanced oxidation processes and biological methods, used in the treatment of textile dye wastewater. However, the methods involve high cost and cause sludge production. To overcome these, a sequential anaerobic-aerobic plant-microbe integrated treatment system was attempted to degrade dye pollutants in textile wastewater. The reduction (anaerobic) and oxidation (sequential aerobic) conditions and also the plant-microbe synergistic association in the rhizosphere aids the removal of various pollutants in the textile dye industry wastewater containing varied pollutants. The choice of sequential reactions helps in the complete degradation of pollutants. A model dye methyl red was degraded using plant alone, microbe alone and plant-microbe integrated system in the sequential anaerobic-aerobic conditions. The integrated system showed effective dye decolorization (92.1±3.5%), and its intermediates amine degradation (89.79±0.69%). The dye degradation was confirmed using Fourier Transform InfraRed Spectroscopy (FTIR), High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis newline