Bacterial and fungal bioreactors for colour removal from distillery spentwash

Abstract

Distillery spentwash has very high biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), colour and various inorganic chemicals. Colour in spent wash is mainly due to dark brown pigment called melanoidins produced from the non-enzymatic browning reaction between aldose and amino compounds. Melanoidins cannot be degraded in conventional wastewater treatment. New promising technologies are developed in the form of bacterial and fungal reactors using pure microbial cultures for the treatment of Distillery Spentwash. The types of reactor used are batch reactor, sequencing batch reactor, bubble column reactor, rotating biological contactor and two stage reactors. Study done on fungal batch reactor using isolated Aspergillus niger gave 70% colour removal.