Bioflocculation of Basic Dye onto Isolated Microbial Biopolymers

M. Elkady, S. Zaki, S. Farag and D. Abd-El-Haleem

Abstract
Three purified biopolymers isolated from Bacillus velezensis (40B), Bacillus mojavensis (32A) and Pseudomonas (38A) strains were evaluated for dye decolourization as bioflocculants. The decolourization capacity of the three polymers was inspected using C.I 28 basic yellow dye as hazardous pollutant. The chemical compositions of these purified biopolymers were considered by HPLC and FTIR spectrum. The decolourization efficiency of the three purified biopolymers was determined using both real dye polluted wastewater (discharged from AKSA EGYPT acrylic fibres industry) and simulated synthetic wastewater. The maximum decolourization efficiencies of the purified biopolymers of the three studied strains (40B), (32A) and (38A) were 91, 89 and 88 %, respectively. The equilibrium of dye sorption process onto biopolymers was described using Langmuir isotherm equation. However, its kinetics follows the pseudo second order model. The thermodynamic examination investigated the exothermic and spontaneous nature of the decolourization process using the purified biopolymers. (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Keywords
bioflocculants, biopolymer characterization, dyes decolourization, theoretical modelling