MICROBIAL-ASSISTED NANOBIOREMEDIATION OF METHYL RED

Abstract

The textile industry is known to consume much more water than any other industry, such that approximately 200L of water is consumed for each kilogram of fabric. In India, the textile industry alone consumes 425,000,000 gallons of water daily. The two main processes that consume the most water are the dyeing of the fabric and washing the fabric. The problem arises, as the dye does not bind properly to the fabric and thus gets discarded as effluent into the water bodies. Apart from this the wastewater also contains tannins, lignins, high pH, high BOD and COD and heavy metals thus causing severe impact on the environment. Keeping in mind the size of the industry, it is crucial to find efficient ways to treat the effluent before releasing it into water channels. On a large scale, many physical and chemical techniques are being used. However, researchers are still in search of less hazardous, efficient and inexpensive techniques for the remediation of dye effluents. The work in this dissertation was done to understand a relatively less-tested combination of techniques. The aim was to use a microbial-assisted nanobioremediation technique to remediate a monoazo dye i.e. Methyl Red. We synthesised MgO nanoparticles (MgO NPs) using Achromobacter sp. To our knowledge, it is the first time MgO NPs are being synthesised from Achromobacter sp. We have extracted laccase enzyme from Brevibacillus bevris. We used both MgO and bacterial laccase to remediate MR. And as per our knowledge, this experimental design is also being done for the first time. We saw only crude laccase degraded MR with Decolourization efficiency(DE) being 20.5%. The DE of only MgO to degrade MR was 23.3%. While the DE when both MgO and crude extracellular laccase enzyme were used together was 37.7%. We can observe that there is a nearly 80 % increase in the DE from only laccase to using both laccase and MgO together. As speculated, combining MgO and laccase enzyme increased the degradation of MR.