Development of bioprocess for identification of pollutant levels in industrial wastewater

Abstract

iii newlineAbstract newlineGujarat is known as a petrochemical hub of India and is contributing 62% of total petrochemicals production in the country. The process from manufacturing till disposal of such petrochemical products discharges aromatic hydrocarbon compounds into the environment from effluents generated through chemical processing industries and ports. The introduction of such hazardous compounds into natural water bodies creates considerable disturbances in aquatic life and causes a threat to human-beings. Owing to increasing concerns regarding pollution problems, there is a high demand for better environmental monitoring. Thus, it is essential to detect and quantify pollutants at various stages from wastewater generation till treatment and their disposal in natural aquatic environments. Also it is required to monitor pollutant levels in the receiving water bodies. This study reports the development of biosensing strains for detection of aromatic hydrocarbon compounds in aqueous solutions. newlineThis study was initiated with the characterization of environmental and industrial wastewater samples for type and concentration of aromatic hydrocarbon compounds by GC-MS method. Contaminated environmental water samples were collected from Kharicut canal and industrial wastewater samples were collected from CETPs of Vatva and Odhav regions, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. GC-MS analysis revealed that mono-aromatic and poly-aromatic compounds were present in the range of 8.26-39.5 mM and 0.8-34.5 mM, respectively, in collected water samples. For on-line detection of aromatic hydrocarbon pollutants in aqueous environments, biosensing strains can be developed with fusion of gene responsible for pollutant sensing protein (regulatory protein and their inducible promoter) with a reporter gene. newlineRegulatory proteins TbuT, HbpR and PhnR are such proteins for recognizing one-, two- and three-rings aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, respectively, for which the binding efficiency of compounds is not known till date. The first step was to predict th