Degradation and detoxification of leather tannery effluent by a newly developed bacterial consortium GS-TE1310 for environmental safety

Abstract

The untreated/partially treated effluent discharged from leather tanning industries is heavily polluting our water and soil resources. Hence, the adequate treatment/detoxification of tannery effluent (TE) is required before its safe disposal into the environment. In the present study, an effective degradation of real TE was attained by a newly developed bacterial consortium GS-TE1310 within 120 h with 76.12, 85.32, 71.89, 48.59, 78.81, 69.53, 71.22, and 88.70 % reduction in pollution parameters such as COD, BOD, TDS, phosphate, sulphate, nitrate, Cr, and phenol, respectively. The HP-LC, FT-IR, and GC–MS study showed that most of the organic contaminants identified in the untreated TE were completely mineralized/degraded into new degradation products in the treated TE by the newly developed bacterial consortium GS-TE1310 at 7 pH, 0.5 % glucose and ammonium chloride, 120 rpm, and 20 mL inoculum volume. Further, the bacterially treated TE was used for the phytotoxicity evaluation using Phaseolus aureus L as a terrestrial model organism. Results revealed that the toxicity of bacterially treated TE was significantly reduced, allowing the 70 % germination of seeds, and thus, confirmed the detoxification of leather TE. Overall, the newly developed bacterial consortium GS-TE1310 demonstrated a remarkable potential to efficiently treat/detoxify leather TE for environmental safety.