Eco-Friendly Degradation of Blue Reactive Dye Enriched Textile Water by Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTWs) System (Part A)

Enriched effluents of textile dye are considered highly complex and containing hazardous components. Their discharge to nearby drains without treatment has high risk to environmental and human health. The physico-chemical strategies under practice to treat these effluents have technical and economical restrictions. Comparatively, biological treatment methods like floating treatment wetlands are less expensive and eco-friendly. Blue reactive dye enriched textile water and prepared synthetically and added to an artificial Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTWs) system vegetated with Eichhornia crassipes and Pistia stratiotes aquatic plants along with Bacillus cereus and Bacillus subtilis bacterial strains. Plant-microbe synergistic effect was studied by measuring the physico-chemical parameters i.e. pH, EC, TDS and TSS of dye enriched water after 0 (at the start of the experiment), 24, 48 and 72 h retention time. A substantial decrease in all these factors (11.34 %, 40.67 %, 64.37 %, 58.23 %, for pH, EC, TDS and TSS respectively) was noted for E. crassipes and B. cereus combination after 72 h retention time. This high lighted the fact that plant assisted microbial FTWs technique can be a unique approach to remediate the textile effluents.