Bioremediation Approaches for Degradation of Textile Dye Effluents

Abstract

In earth, water is considered as one of the most valuable substance for living organisms for their healthy growth. Due to rapid industrialization and its advancement, in many occasions, thousands of living organisms die because of discharge of effluent/polluted water from various industries to the environment. Among the pollutants, textile industries effluents are the major causative agent damaging the ecosystem and water system in the environment significantly. Presently, almost one million tons of dyes are utilized in textile industry, whereas about 10% of dyes are released to the environment without effective effluent treatment. Among the different types of dyes, azo dyes are most predominant one in the textile industry and these azo dyes are not easily degraded by bacteria. These effluent wastewaters from azo dye textile units can deteriorate the ecosystem, quality of water, generate the pollution, eutrophication, interruption of aquatic life and can cause different disorders to the human health. In addition, metabolic intermediates of these dyes are mutagenic and carcinogenic; it can cause severe damage to different organs of the human body. Several physico-chemical techniques are utilized to treat this effluent. However, each technique has its own limitations, generating toxic and secondary waste products leading to critical situations. Recently, removal of dye from the effluent by biological method has gained much importance because of its sustainable approach, non-toxic, treatment cost effectiveness and ecofriendly in managing the pollution. In biological method, different biological elements such as microorganisms including fungi, bacteria, yeast, algae, actinobacteria and plants are utilized and it can be applicable to contaminated sites. Among the above biological elements, plants have been considered as one of potential as well as economical element in the dye effluent treatment. Consequently, successful enactment of this biological treatment can provide valuable protection this environment from this textile industry dye effluent wastewater. In this chapter, remediation techniques with respect to this textile dye effluent wastewater have been discussed deeply in order to protect and maintain this environment sustainably in near future.