Bioremediation of real textile wastewater with a microalgal-bacterial consortium: an eco-friendly strategy

Water scarcity is an unavoidable challenge due to the rapid depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the removal performance of native microalgae with bacteria as co-culture under varied conditions and to check the growth patterns of microalgae in real wastewater. This research evaluates the feasibility of utilizing real textile wastewater as a growth medium for microalgal production and wastewater treatment. Textile wastewater combines various organic and inorganic chemicals, typically consisting of dyes and nutrients. The microalgal-bacterial consortium appeared to be a promising tool for the bioremediation of real textile wastewater. In this study, a fed-batch reactor was used to treat real textile wastewaters in a 24-h cycle duration of a week. The experiment was conducted in three different stages which are single stage, two stage, and consortium to remove nutrients. The results indicated that a consortium of microalgae-bacteria provides maximum removal efficiency, i.e., 58.57% nitrate (NO3-), 86.42% phosphate PO43- (PO43-), and 91.5% chemical oxygen demand (COD) with a maximum 12.88 mg/L and 1.7 g/L of chlorophyll and bacterial dry cell weight, respectively. At the same time, maximum color removal was achieved in a single stage (only algae), i.e., 41.54%. Hence, results indicated that this method treats real textile wastewater cost-effectively and produces biomass that could be utilized as a biofertilizer and energy-efficient projects.

Automated summary

The study aims to investigate the removal performance of microalgae-bacteria consortium for real textile wastewater and evaluate its feasibility for microalgal production and wastewater treatment. The results showed that the consortium achieved maximum removal efficiency for nitrate, phosphate, and chemical oxygen demand, while the single stage (only algae) performed better in color removal.