Treatment of Textile Processing Effluent Using Bacterial Isolate and Activated Charcoal

Abstract

Textile industries consume a huge quantity of water for their processes and generate an almost equal quantity of wastewater. Effluent Sample of textile processing industry was collected and physicochemical analysis was performed as per the standard protocol of APHA 2017. The high value of Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and adverse effect on wheat seeds, this highlights effluent is a highly toxic and hazardous effect to the ecosystem. Bacterial isolate identified as Bacillus licheniformis was screened for various hydrolytic enzymes and explored for effluent treatment, it showed a reduction in BOD by 50% and COD by 53%. The bacterial treatment followed by physical treatment by activated charcoal, resulted in 97% and 98% reduction in BOD and COD respectively. After treatment, the toxicity assessment by seed germination was performed and 90% germination of the wheat seed was increased in comparison with untreated effluent. Textile wastewater has very high amount of organic compound which makes this effluent very toxic and hazardous to environment. The combination of biological and physical treatment method shows significant reduction in terms of BOD, COD and toxicity which makes this combined treatment method more appropriate for such type of effluent.