Bioremediation of Tannery Effluent by Selected Fungal Species

Microbial population has amazing enzymatic and metabolic potential to degrade a variety of organic compounds. Eighteen species of fungi were isolated from leather tanning effluents from Thirumudivakkam, Chennai. Out of these four dominant species of fungi like Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus terreus, Paecilomyces varioti and Phanerochaete chrysosporium were selected and used for bioremediation of effluents. Individual and mixed cultures of fungi were used to control pH, BOD, COD, TSS and TDS in the tannery effluent. The biodegradation of tannery effluent was estimated at two different periods of incubation, on the 6th and 12th day. Among all experiments, biodegradation by using mixed culture of fungi showed better results than that by individual species.