Evaluation of tire derived rubber (TDR) fixed biofilm reactor (FBR) for remediation of Methylene blue dye from wastewater

ABSTRACT

The present investigation is focused on development of aerobic biofilm on tire-derived rubber (TDR) media and then evaluation of such system for bioremediation of Methylene blue (MB) dye for 9 weeks. After 9 weeks of operation, the COD, BOD, ammonia and color values have been declined by 89.2%, 98.3%, 99.61% and 99.81%, respectively, While SEM-EDX results showed a variance in weight percent of various elements in TDR without biofilm i.e. raw TDR media, as well as in the 1st and 9th-week samples. Moreover, fine and strong peaks were observed in both the MB simulated wastewater and 9th week TDR samples at 1190, 1300, 1400, 1450, 1500 and 1618 cm⁻¹ respectively by Raman Spectroscopic analysis. Further, FTIR analysis was performed for the MB simulated wastewater, and absorbance peaks ranging from 1591 to 1363 cm^-1 and 3410 cm⁻¹ were observed in all the samples with different intensities. To assess the biodeterioration of the TDR media, ATR was performed for the raw, 1st, 2nd and 9th week TDR media samples and in the raw TDR, two important bands, 842 and 2962 cm⁻¹ were noticed representing –CH = CH and –CH₃. A clear variation of bands and peak intensities were observed in different support media samples. The results indicate that TDR media is a resilient, chemically resistant material and could be employed for the biofilm growth for biological treatment of textile dye wastewater.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Tire derived rubber (TDR)
• biofilm
• Methylene blue dye wastewater

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to extend heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Steven Hinder (Materials Science and Engineering), Mr. David Jones and Rhys Mayer (Centre for Engineering Materials), Judy Peters and Max Attwood (Department of Chemistry), Caryn Jones (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) of the University of Surrey, UK and Mr. Aditya of NIT Warangal. The authors also wish to acknowledge Professor Tony Parker, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), UK for the Raman Spectroscopy analysis and the Director NITW for all the other support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicting interests.

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research project was funded jointly by the British Council, UK and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), MHRD, India under the Newton Bhabha Fellowship Program.