The purpose of this study was to investigate the optimum conditions, including aerobic and anoxic conditions, for operating a long-term bioreactor system to decrease the toxicity of industrial electroplating wastewater effluents containing metal cyanide using Agrobacterium tumefaciens SUTS 1 and Pseudomonas monteilii SUTS 2. The initial results revealed that bacteria performed better under aerobic conditions than under anoxic conditions. An aerobic bioreactor system was subsequently set up in a long-term study lasting 30days under optimum operating conditions. Both mixed-culture bacteria and indigenous bacteria promoted the high-efficiency treatment of cyanide and metals in the first 7days of the study. When the system had high removal rates, cyanide removal was greater than that of zinc, copper, nickel, and chromium (CN- > Zn > Cu > Ni > Cr), with removal efficiencies of 96.67%, 93.93%, 74.17%, 63.43%, and 44.65%, respectively, with residual concentrations of 0.15 ± 0.01, 0.24 ± 0.005, 0.03 ± 0.002, 18.41 ± 0.06 and 14.26 ± 0.15mg/L, respectively. The cell concentration in the bioreactor increased to approximately 107CFU/mL over 30days from initial cell concentrations of 6.15 × 105 CFU/mL and 1.05 × 103CFU/mL for the mixed culture and indigenous inoculation, respectively. These results implied that the bacteria were resistant to heavy metal toxicity. The addition of an appropriate carbon source with sufficient aeration to a bioreactor resulted in increased cyanide degradation.
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