Pretreatment of textile effluent by ultrasound based hybrid methods for the enhancement of biodegradability

Abstract

This study presents the biodegradation of real textile effluent pretreated with different hybrid methods. The experiments were carried out with and without pretreatment of effluent to analyze the influence of different pretreatment methods. The advanced oxidation processes such as sonolysis, sono-sorption and sono-Fenton-sorption were employed for the pretreatment of the effluent. In sono-sorption and sono-Fenton-sorption, eco-friendly, cost effective and easily available tea waste was used as an adsorbent. The sorbent was activated using formaldehyde followed by sonolysis. The biodegradation was carried out using mixed culture and the optimal initial pH and incubation temperature were found to be 7 and 32 ^oC, respectively. The UV-vis and FTIR analyses of untreated and treated effluents confirmed the degradation of organic pollutants. The microbial growth data obtained were tested with Monod, Powell, Haldane, Luong and Edward equations and the obtained data were found to fit well with Haldane model.