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Effective bioremediation and toxicity assessment of tannery wastewaters treated with indigenous bacteria

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Abstract

This study evaluated the bioremediation capacity of indigenous bacteria isolated from tannery sludge for two different tannery wastewaters collected from Kanpur and Chennai. To identify bacteria which can efficiently degrade a mixture of different pollutants, the isolates were grown in hazardous 100% tannery wastewaters. The reductions in toxicants such as chromium, sulphate, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the wastewater were analysed post-bioremediation. Amongst the isolates, Citrobacter freundii was able to reduce the concentration of multiple toxicants such as chromium by 73% and sulphate was reduced by 68% bringing down the level much below the permissible limit stipulated by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Notably, the organic load characterized by BOD and COD was also lowered by 86 and 80%, respectively. The indigenous isolates, not only bioremediated the Kanpur effluent but, also significantly detoxified the Chennai effluent having higher toxicant load. An interesting observation made during the study was better survival and growth along with the development of appendages of Artemia nauplii in the treated wastewaters which thus further confirmed reduction in toxicity of the effluents. The results thus demonstrate that the tested indigenous strains are promising for bioremediation of tannery wastewater and effectively improve the water quality for safe discharge.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Director, NIO, Drs. N. Ramaiah and B.S. Ingole former Heads, Biological Oceanography Division for their constant support and facilitation. The authors are grateful to Mr. R.A. Sreepada for allowing to use the laboratory facilities, Mr. R.M. Meena for providing the DNA sequencing facility; Mr. Areef Sardar for SEM analysis. The financial support from CSIR for PSC0206 is gratefully acknowledged. The first author would also like to acknowledge the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), India for the Senior Research Fellowship. The third author would like to acknowledge CSIR for the research fellowship and also the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) for the support. This is NIO contribution no. 6294.

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  1. Biological Oceanography Division, CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa, 403004, India

    A. S. Vijayaraj, C. Mohandass & Nikita Rajput

  2. Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa, 403004, India

    Devika Joshi

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  1. A. S. Vijayaraj
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  2. C. Mohandass
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Correspondence to C. Mohandass.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed.

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Vijayaraj, A.S., Mohandass, C., Joshi, D. et al. Effective bioremediation and toxicity assessment of tannery wastewaters treated with indigenous bacteria. 3 Biotech 8, 428 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-018-1444-3

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