Microbial process for pollution control: Bioremediation

One of the most common waste removal target is removing heavy metals from industrial waste water where metals are the most hazardous elements in water. Cadmium which is present in the discharges of electronics plastics, batteries etc is absorbed by human body and exerts its toxic effects. As bacteria posses the ability to remove such metals. Using two native strains, a lab-scale bioreactor was developed for the remediation of cadmium. The strains identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa designated as CΜG64 and C1G52 were isolated from metal contaminated sites (Pakistan) and were found to tolerate cadmium salt upto 2.0 mM and 4.3 mM respectively CΜG64 exhibited highest accumulation/removal of cadmium from the medium was then used in a bioreactor where biofilms of this strain were developed on different support materials and successfully used for cadmium removal. Bioreactor containing biofilms on wood shavings removed 90% of the cadmium after 110 mins and the efficiency of reactor was highly depended on the concentration and flow rate of challenging solution-containing cadmium (artificial effluent).