Bioremediation of Xenobiotic Organic Compounds in Greywater by Fungi Isolated from Peatland, a Future Direction

Abstract

The conventional wastewater treatment processes aim to remove pathogens and priority pollutants in terms of chemical and physical characteristics such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids (TSS). Some of the technologies are used for reduction of nutrients such as the phycoremediation process which has high efficiency for the reduction of total nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater. Unfortunately, these techniques have no contribution to the removal of XOCs. The greywater with XOCs should be subjected to an advanced treatment process to remove xenobiotic organic compounds (XOCs) before the final disposal into the environment. The current treatment by the oxidation processes is insufficient and expensive as well as have many of toxic by-products. This gap offered the investigators greater opportunities to explore effective and eco-friendly alternative technologies for XOCs degradation in greywater. Moreover, many of the fungi from the peat soil especially that belong to white rot fungi have higher enzymatic activities and produce a lot of oxidative enzymes such as laccase, lignin and manganese peroxidases. These enzymes are the main factor in the bioremediation process of the pollutants in the contaminated environment such as wastewater. Among different types of the oxidative enzymes from the fungi, the peroxidase and laccase have high importance in the biodegradation of XOCs. The current chapter discusses the potential of fungi as an alternative green technology for the degradation of XOCs from the greywater.