Title: Biodegradation of formaldehyde using Bacillus subtilis in batch process

Authors: Panchanathan Ezhilkumar; V.M. Sivakumar; A. Yogasri; M. Thirumarimurugan

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, Adhiyamaan College of Engineering, Hosur, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India

Abstract: Formaldehyde plays a vital role in most of the chemical industries and can be present in most industrial waste effluents. HCHO is highly toxic to most living organisms and is known to cause cancer and sick-house syndrome. Therefore effluent containing formaldehyde should be treated before discharging into the environment. Bacillus subtilis is one of the bacterial species which have potential to degrade formaldehyde. A microbial immobilisation method was applied in the treatment of formaldehyde for an effective degradation. The objective of this study is to determine the efficiency of bacteria under different experimental conditions such as pH, inoculum size, and HCHO concentration in the batch reactor. It was observed that the biodegradation of formaldehyde was maximum at pH value 7 and 15% (wt %) inoculum size and reached 73% COD reduction after treatment. Functional groups are present in the effluent and biodegradation of formaldehyde after treatments were identified by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy.

Keywords: Bacillus subtilis; surface immobilisation; inoculum size; FTIR spectroscopy; formaldehyde degradation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMPT.2017.084963

International Journal of Materials and Product Technology, 2017 Vol.55 No.1/2/3, pp.296 - 307

Received: 02 May 2016
Accepted: 25 Nov 2016
Published online: 09 Jul 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article