S. Sivasakthi

Application of traditional waste water treatment requires enormous cost and continuous input of chemicals which becomes uneconomical and causes further environmental damage. Hence, economical and ecofriendly techniques using microorganisms can be applied for fine tuning of waste water treatment. Thus, by this present study, it was concluded that the bacterial isolates like Bacillus odyssey, Bacillus thuringiensis, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Alcaligenes sp., and Nocardiopsis alba were used as a good microbial source for the textile Reactive dye decolourization and waste water treatment in textile dye industries. The bacteria Nocardiopsis alba showed high decolourization percentage against textile Reactive dyes followed by Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Alcaligenes sp., Bacillus odyssey and Bacillus thuringiensis. Among the three dyes tested, the dye Reactive Orange - 16 was highly decolourized by the bacterial isolates when compared to other reactive dyes. The bacterial isolates showed more effective decolourization of the test textile Reactive dyes when compared to the individual bacterial isolates which was isolated from the textile dye effluent.

The Tannery industry releases waste water is a serious consequence from the pollution point of view for streams, freshwater and land used for agriculture. The lack of awareness in the modern industrial practice has resulted in the discharge of tannery effluents which exhibit very high value for chromium, sulphide, and chloride, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) in the water stream or land. In the course of the last two decades a wide variety of technologies had been developed for cleanup operations of contaminated sites. Bioremediation has evolved as the most promising one because of its economical safety and environmental features, since organic contaminants become actually transferred and some of them are fully mineralized. Bioremediation of tannery effluents is an attractive environment friendly, safe and cost effective alternative technology to conventional methods. Microbes in the environment play an important role in cycling and destroying them through biodegradation.