Wastewater Treatment Using Microorganisms Resistant to Heavy Metal and Isolated from Tannery Effluent

Abstract

In this study, 23 microbial isolates were isolated and tested for their ability to resist trivalent chromium and hexavalent chromium. Fungal isolates definitely D2 and 2NF proved high capability to resist trivalent and hexavalent chromium up to 15 mM and 5 mM respectively. D2 and 2NF were identified based on similarity of their 18S rRNA with analogs in genebank data. D2 belongs to aspergillus flavus strain USMG09 and 2NF belongs to fungal endophyte culture collection STRI:ICBG-Panama:TK1285 based on 99 and 99 % similarity. Pretreated biomass either by immobilization or chemical treatment proved high biosorption efficiency compared with dried native biomass. Immobilized biomass had high reduction percent of hexavalent chromium reached 100 % and high bioremoval percent of trivalent chromium reached 98.5 %