Fenton Oxidation and Fungal Remediation of Different Pollutants from Kitchener Drain, Egypt.

Abstract

Wastewater from Kitchener drain cause many effects not only on the surrounding environment but when being discharged into the Mediterranean Sea water. Using different remediation processes for heavy metals removal has important role in purification of different types of wastewaters aid in recycling process. This work is aimed to use Fenton as chemical remediation process for reduction of organic pollutants and to screen the efficiency of the fungal isolates in heavy metal removal process by generation of an immobilized fungal consortium. Parameters affecting the Fenton process as pH, dosages of Fenton reagents and temperature were taken into considerations in this research. Results showed that the optimum conditions to have high removal of organic matter from wastewater sample at the experiment were at FeSO4 (0.4 gm), hydrogen peroxide H2O2 (15%), at acidic medium (pH = 2) and temperature of about 40°C. It showed high removal of chemical oxygen demand COD concentration from sample with 80 to 95% removal. On the other experiment, a mixture of fungal spores was used to remove Chromium, Cadmium and Nickel ions in batch modes. In this mode, the immobilized biomass was enclosed in a hanged tea bag-like cellulose membrane to facilitate the separation of the biosorbent from the treated solutions, which is one of the main challenges in applying microbial biosorption at large scale. The chemical remediation approved the potentiality to reduce non-biodegradable components which can’t be consumed by bio-remediates i.e. fungi and bacteria. Where, all the obtained biosorbent isolates showed more significant efficiency in heavy metal removal. The most potential biosorbent fungi were identified and characterized. Finally, these remediation methods can be applied for removal of different pollutants from wastewaters.