Inventor: Prof. Dr. Zainab Ziad Ismail/Department of Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad
Abstract
Biological treatment is considered as one of the most effective processes for the degradation and removal of refractory hazardous organics existing in the industrial waste waters. Biological treatment is a superior process over chemical treatment for not producing by-products which may be more hazardous than the original pollutants, since its final products are H2O and CO2. In order to preserve the bacteria from extreme environmental conditions such as high or very low temperature, in addition to high concentration of pollutants or change in the value of acidic function (pH), biological treatment using immobilized bacteria for degradation of complex organics is an extremely vital and promising process in encountering the most challenging environmental problems.
It is one of the most promising techniques to address the most complex environmental problems caused hazardous complex organic pollutant released from industrial factories, on top of the list, the ones caused by textile industries which discharge large amounts of water contaminated with hazardous azo dyes. In this study, a novel application of Salepi, a food ingredient product was used for immobilization of bacterial cells for decolorization and biodegradation of three commercially used reactive dyes which were: reactive red (RR), reactive blue (RB), and reactive yellow (RY) via sequential anaerobic-aerobic processes. Results revealed that the immobilized biocatalysts had a potential degrading efficiency in the anaerobic and aerobic environment.