Phenol removal from industrial wastewater using chitosan- immobilized Pseudomonas putida

* CorrespondingAuthor: Email: mkhavarpoor@yahoo.com, Fax: (+98)-1143217212 commonly present in various industrial waste streams such as oil refining, resin and plastic, coal gasification plants, coke oven, pulp and paper plants, pharmaceutics and agroindustrial units [5]. The ingestion of phenol in the human body resulted in serious health risk such as protein degeneration, paralysis of the central nervous system and liver and kidney damage [6]. The presence of phenol in Article history: Received: 8/Apr/2014 Received in revised form:11/May/2014 Accepted: 5/Jun/2014 Abstra c t The present study deals with degradation of phenol in industrial wastewater using Pseudomonas putida. Biodegradation process at various initial phenol concentrations ranging from 50 to 200 mg/l was evaluated at different conditions. Phenol removal as single source of carbon at initial phenol concentration of 200 mg/l took place within 22 days. Phenol/ glucose mixture used as dual system to improve phenol degradation. The presence of glucose as supplementary substrate degraded phenol at initial concentration of 200 mg/l within 19 days. Acclimated Pseudomonas putida was able to degrade phenol at initial phenol concentration of 200 mg/l within 15 days. It was also revealed that phenol degradation using acclimated Pseudomonas putida immobilized on chitosan was carried out at the shortest period of time in contrast to the other conditions. The obtained results represented that microorganism was able to consume phenol as a substrate.