TREATMENT OF DISTILLERY WASTE WATER BY PSEUDOMONAS PUTIDA

Abstract

Distillery wastewater generally known as stillage, constitutes a high strength acidic waste that presents significant disposal or treatment problems. Intensive treament of distillery wastewater has become imparative due to its high BOD, COD, suspended solids and highly objectionable colour. The BOD of the wastewater ranges from 45,000 to 60,000 mg/1 and as the Pollution Control Board Standards, the BOD for disposal into river and on land should not exceed 30 mg/I and 100 mg /I respectively. Various studies undertaken for the treatment of disillery effluent have not been able to yield an efficient and economical treatment method to achieve the desired standards. The methods adopted presently include physico-chemical treatment and biologcal treatment, latter being more successful. In biological process also combination of anaerobic and aerobic processes have been in vogue but the effluent of combined process needs to be further treated for safe discharge into rivers or streams and on land. In the present study a process for treatment of partially treated distillery effluent has been developed using bacterial strains of Pseudomonas putida. The studies have been conducted for determination of biokinetic constants in activated sludge process, and for removal of COD and colour of the effluent in a continuous reactor using free cells of Pseudomonas putida under aerobic condition. The continuous studies indicate that with a optimum detenion time of 48 hrs, the COD and colour removal efficiencies of 66.27% and 62.74% were achieved. The values of the biokenetic constants evaluated from the present study agree favourable with those obtained for other industrial wastewaters and these values could be used for a more rational design of activated sludge plants. (