The rapid economic growth experienced by Malaysia in the last two decades has concomitantly resulted in negative impact on the environment, which necessitates more stringent management and control measures. In order to upgrade the overall environmental quality and performance, the Government made comprehensive amendments to the Environmental Quality Act, which was enforced by the Department of Environment on 1 August 1996. The various environmental quality regulations are being reviewed, with the view of introducing more stringent discharge standard limits, as well as new effluent parameters to control pollutants that have hitherto been exempted.
These measures have created significant pressure on the industrial sector to upgrade the efficiency of their waste treatment systems in order to achieve compliance. Such advanced treatment processes, commonly involving the use of chemicals, or in combination with the use of high-end equipment, either incur high costs, or are not readily available in the market. It is therefore desirable that cost-effective indigenous technologies be developed to contribute to the sustainable development of the local industry. Of the currently enforced pollution parameters and those new ones being proposed, in particular COD, heavy metals, nitrogen and colour, it has been reported in the literature that bioremediation processes harnessing specific microbial consortia for the breakdown of complex or recalcitrant organics under optimised conditions are possible. In waste treatment, biological processes, if proven viable, are often the most cost-effective compared to physical and chemical processes.
In industrial wastes, COD and colour are normally associated with the presence of persistent organics that are not readily amenable to breakdown by conventional means. Examples of such pollutants are dyes, pigments, lignin, tannic acids, melanoidenes, phenolics, carbamates, etc. By carefully providing conducive growth environment, experimentally selected microbial groups could symbiotically interact to biodegrade these compounds, thereby reducing the discharge levels of the parameters concerned.
Adsorption or accumulation of heavy metals by microorganisms has received much attention recently due to its potential use in industrial wastewater treatment processes. Both living and dead cells of bacteria and fungi have been found to be effective in adsorbing heavy metals such as mercury, zinc, cadmium, lead chromium.
Nitrogen removal from wastewaters will be most effectively carried out using microbial nitrification and denitrification. However, waste types which are of interest to Malaysia, such as textile, rubber products, palm oil, food, fermentation, etc. are still scarcely studied.

Project Title:

Development of Bioremediation processes for Textile Wastewater

 

Highly efficient microbial processes involving biofilm formation offer great potential for this objective
This three-year project therefore aims specifically to develop cost-effective microbial processes as viable solutions for textile industries to address their pollution problems through compliance with the regulatory requirements with respect to difficult parameters, namely COD, colour, nitrogen and heavy metals, being currently enforced, or to be introduced for enforcement.

It will be implemented as a coherent collaborative project among several research institutions, namely, SIRIM, UM, UiTM, UKM, UPM and UTM, each focusing on an integral component of the project, but collectively addressing the aforementioned issues. The approach encompasses three main areas, covering (a) biodegradation or bioconversion of persistent organics, (b) development of microbial process and/or products and process optimisation, (c) biological recovery or removal. The target industry is the textile dyeing industry. However, the technology may also be applied to other industries like palm oil, rubber products, pulp & paper, food, fermentation and paint. The project is expected to generate the following outputs: (1) new indigenous technologies and products for the advanced treatment of specific industrial wastes (2) bioremediation technologies for persistent organics, (3) environmental engineering design for developed microbial processes, (4) bioproducts for addressing difficult pollution parameters of COD, colour, nitrogen and heavy metals, (5) technical human resource developed through associated post-graduate research programmes.

Period of the project : 3 Years (2001 - 2004)

Achievements

Progress/Achievements for year one

- Nill

Project Status

- On-going