Pharmaceutical wastewater treatment using free and immobilized Cyanobacteria

Shabana, E. F.; Senousy, H. H.; Khourshid, E. B.

doi:10.21608/egyjs.2019.116025

Pharmaceutical wastewater treatment using free and immobilized Cyanobacteria

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Egypt.

10.21608/egyjs.2019.116025

Abstract

An attempt has been made to study the feasibility of pharmaceutical wastewaters (laboratories waste (WI) and production waste (WII)) treatment using free and immobilized cyanobacterium Phormidium fragile. After preliminary test with different concentrations, WI showed high toxicity, only 0.5% conc. was effective while WII was used at high conc. of 40% after 10 days incubation (from growth curve experiment) in optimum growth conditions. Role of Phormidium cellsin bioremediation of pharmaceutical wastewaters was effective whereas maximum percentage removal in tested parameters were 51.56% and 58.89% for ammonia, 66.67% and 61.23% for phosphorus, 51.74% and 54.55% for COD and 37.05% and 59.85% for BOD in WI and WII respectively with respect to treatments without microalgae. N-starvation for 36 hours prior to cultivation caused increase in percentage removal of ammonia, phosphorus and COD with increase in algal dose than unstarved cells, 100%, 100% and 72.56% for WI and 87.28%, 100% and 71.98% for WII, respectively with 40 ml algal dose. It was found that 2500 lux and 25 ºC were the best for nutrients removal. Chlorophyll a, dry weight, protein and total carbohydrate contents were also estimated. During this study, pH levels increased and remained in the range 7.3 to 9.1. Significant removal of ammonia, phosphorus and COD were observed in algal alginate beads treatments than blank beads. Starvation before immobilization recorded the highest removal percentage when compared to unstarved beads or free cells in both wastes types and their mixture (1:1). When starved and unstarved Phormidium beads were incubated in WI, WII and a mixture of both in a semi-continuous system for five consecutive cycles (10 days each), there was increase in nutrients percentage removal up to the third cycle. Microalga in the beads survived long enough which gives a promise to upgrading immobilization technique for wastewater treatment with low cost.

Keywords

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