Potentials of phototrophic bacteria in treating pharmaceutical wastewater

A suspended growth photobioreactor was utilized to treat pharmaceutical wastewater by a wild strain purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacterium isolated from the soil. The strain was named Z08 and identified as Rhodobacter-sphaeroides by 16SrDN. The photobioreactor was illuminated externally with two (40 W) fluorescent compact light sources on both sides. Its operation pH and temperature were between 6.8–7.0 and 20–30 °C, respectively. Optimum growth of the isolate was obtained after enrichment of the pharmaceutical wastewater with 0.5 % ammonium sulfate and 0.1 % yeast extract under microaerobic optimum light (6000 lx) condition at 5d retention. Using these optimum conditions, the maximum dry cell weight and chemical oxygen demand percentage removal were 880 mg/L and 80 %. Chemical analysis of the culture after treatment of the enriched and non-enriched wastewater showed the crude protein content of the biomass to be 54.6 % and 38.0 %, respectively. This study proved that photosynthetic bacteria could transform complex wastewater that contains recalcitrant organic compounds with a resultant recovery of useful products.