Bacterial Decolourization of Reactive Textile Dyes

Application of traditional waste water treatment requires enormous cost and continuous input of chemicals which becomes uneconomical and causes further environmental damage. Hence, economical and ecofriendly techniques using microorganisms can be applied for fine tuning of waste water treatment. Thus, by this present study, it was concluded that the bacterial isolates like Bacillus odyssey, Bacillus thuringiensis, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Alcaligenes sp., and Nocardiopsis alba were used as a good microbial source for the textile Reactive dye decolourization and waste water treatment in textile dye industries. The bacteria Nocardiopsis alba showed high decolourization percentage against textile Reactive dyes followed by Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Alcaligenes sp., Bacillus odyssey and Bacillus thuringiensis. Among the three dyes tested, the dye Reactive Orange - 16 was highly decolourized by the bacterial isolates when compared to other reactive dyes. The bacterial isolates showed more effective decolourization of the test textile Reactive dyes when compared to the individual bacterial isolates which was isolated from the textile dye effluent.