Biodegradation of formaldehyde using Bacillus subtilis in batch process

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.