BIOREMEDIATION OF SYNTHETIC TEXTILE EFFLUENT BY MARINE-DERIVED FUNGI

The textile industry uses large amounts of chemical compounds in its production processes. However, many of these compounds, such as dyes, are toxic and need a proper treatment before been disposed in the environment. In this context, the bioremediation process has been shown to be a sustainable and low-cost alternative for the attenuation or elimination of the toxicity of textile dyes. In addition, the use of marine-derived fungi has advantages since they are tolerant to salinity and alkalinity of the marine environment, which are characteristics also found in textile effluents. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the detoxification of synthetic textile effluent using fungi derived from marine environment. The experiments were structure with the following marine-derived fungi: Tinctosporellus sp. CBMAI 1061, Marasmiellus sp. CBMAI 1062, Peniophora sp. CBMAI 1063 and the isolate LAMAI 659. The fungi were grown in Petri dishes with malt extract (ME) 2% for 7 days, from which three cylinders with 0.5cm diameter were removed and placed in ME 1.5% liquid medium for two days. The textile effluent was prepared using three dyes (Sulfur Black 200mg/L, Indigo Blue 200mg/L and Reactive Blue 200mg/L), NaCl 30g/L, ME 0.3%, and pH 8.0. The fungi were placed separately in the synthetic textile effluent, where they remained for 7 days. After this period the dry biomass was obtained and the detoxification was analyzed using MICROTOX equipment (with the bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri as bioindicator). The results showed that the fungus Marasmiellus sp. presented the highest amount of dry biomass (0.210g) among the fungi tested, followed by Peniophora sp. (0.074g), Tinctosporellus sp. (0.055g) and the isolate LAMAI 659 (0.048g). Furthermore, the EC_50 (after 30 min) found in the untreated effluent was 0.31%, while in the bioprocesses were 0.34%, 0.35%, 0.28% and 12.16% for the fungi Peniophora sp., LAMAI 659, Tinctosporellus sp., and Marasmiellus sp., respectively. The results indicated that, there was a decrease in the toxicity of the synthetic textile effluent after the treatment with Marasmiellus sp. In addition, the highest amount of dry biomass was also found with the same fungus, corroborating with the detoxification result. Among the fungi from marine origin studied, Marasmiellus sp. was the most promising for bioremediation of textile effluents.