Bioremediation potential of bacterial consortium on different wastewaters for electricity and biomass feedstock generation

The cooperative relationships of natural environmental microbial consortia and synthetic microbial consortia have inspired for studying microbial interactions and various engineering applications. In this current study, different industrial wastewaters (distillery spent wash (DSW), pharmaceutical and dairy wastewater) were treated in three different microbial fuel cells (MFCs) with single and mixed culture bacteria. The performance of MFCs was evaluated considering the major parameters like organic matter removal, voltage generation and biomass production using mixed and single cultures. The maximum COD removal efficiency of 72.5 ± 0.5% from DSW, 85 ± 0.5% from pharmaceutical wastewater and 86 ± 0.5% from dairy wastewater were observed. The results indicate the effective symbiotic relation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Bacillus cereus for bioremediation in MFC. The maximum voltage generation of 350.2 ± 0.5 mV in MFC using DSW, 705.4 ± 0.5 mV in MFC using pharmaceutical wastewater and 787.47 ± 0.5 mV in MFC using dairy wastewater were observed relatively higher than other previous study using mixed culture. The produced CO₂ from the biogas of anode chamber was transferred from anodic chamber to cathodic chamber for effective utilization in microalgal growth. The maximum algal biomass of 0.52 ± 0.05 g/L from MFC1_B+P, 0.82 ± 0.05 g/L from MFC2_B+P and 0.95 ± 0.05 g/L from MFC3_B+P was observed. First order of kinetic model was performed, and as a result, the model was found appropriate and validate the experimental results. This study reveals the possibility of using adapted microbial consortia in MFCs for achieving efficient bioremediation of organic and inorganic contaminates and concomitant bioelectricity generation using different industrial wastewater.