Insights into the Synergistic Effect of Fungi and Bacteria for Reactive Red Decolorization

• Main Authors: Dandan Zhou, Xueying Zhang, Yilin Du, Shuangshi Dong, Zhengxue Xu, Lei Yan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2014-01-01
• Series: Journal of Spectroscopy
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/237346

Bacterial contamination is a prevalent problem in fungal dye wastewater decolorization that prevents the development of this technology in practical engineering. New insight into the relationship between fungi and bacteria is given in terms of settleability, bioadsorption, and biodegradation, which all confirm their synergistic effect. Sterilization is implied to be not the only mechanism for fungi decolorization. When the fungi and bacteria isolated from the activated sludge were cocultured, fungi removed more than 70% of the reactive red through sole bioadsorption in 5 min and enhanced the settleability of the bacteria group from 7.7 to 18.4 in the aggregation index. Subsequently, the bacteria played a more significant role in dye biodegradation according to the ultraviolet-visible spectrum analysis. They further enhanced the decolorization efficiency to over 80% when cocultured with fungi. Therefore, the advanced bioadsorption and settleability of fungi, combined with the good dye biodegradation ability of bacteria, results in the synergistic effect of the coculture microorganisms.