Abstract
Atrazine is widely used in the agriculture as an herbicide. Due to its high mobility, Atrazine leaks into the groundwaters, surface waters, and drinking water wells. Many physical and chemical methods have been suggested for removing Atrazine from aquatic environments. However, these methods are very costly, have many performance problems, produce a lot of toxic intermediates which are very harmful and dangerous, and cannot completely mineralize Atrazine. In this study, biodegradation of Atrazine by microbial consortium was evaluated in the aquatic environment. In order to assess the Atrazine removal from the aquatic environment, submerged biological aerated filter (SBAF) was fed with synthetic wastewater based on sucrose and Atrazine at different hydraulic retention times (HRTs). The maximum efficiencies for Atrazine and Soluble Chemical Oxygen Demand (SCOD) removal were 97.9% and 98.9%, respectively. The study findings showed that Stover-Kincannon model had very good fitness (R2 > 99%) in loading Atrazine in the biofilter and by increasing the initial concentration of Atrazine, the removal efficiency increased. Aerobic mixed biofilm culture was observed to be suitable for the treatment of Atrazine from aquatic environment. There was no significant inhibition effect on mixed aerobic microbial consortia. Atrazine degradation depended on the strength of wastewater and the amount of Atrazine in the influent.
Highlights
Atrazine, (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine), probably is the most commonly used herbicide in the agricultural activity [1,2,3,4]
The most important parameters monitored in the experiments were Atrazine residual and Soluble Chemical Oxygen Demand (SCOD) and the means of the measured data are reported in this paper (Table 7)
The present study investigated the ability of a Submerged Biological Aerated Filter (SBAF) to remove Atrazine from aqueous environment
Summary
Atrazine, (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine), probably is the most commonly used herbicide in the agricultural activity [1,2,3,4]. Atrazine is a member of s-triazine group herbicides and is a probable human carcinogen (Group 2B) [5,6,7] which can cause delayed puberty, impaired development of the reproductive system and endocrine disrupting [8,9,10]. Atrazine is resistant in the environment and, as a result, causes serious environmental problems. It penetrates through the surface and subsurface water bodies due to its excessive usage and high persistence and mobility [10,11,12,13]. When people are exposed to Atrazine at levels above the drinking water maximum contaminant level (MCL) for relatively short
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