Treatability Study of Fish Market Wastewater in a Batch Reactor Using Suspended Growth Microbial Culture

Fish market wastewater (FMWW) contains high organic and nutrient-rich pollutants. In the present study, it has been observed whether a laboratory-grown microbial consortium can degrade organic levels satisfactorily from real-life samples. Also, the corresponding kinetic constants have been evaluated through a batch study using real-life wastewater in the laboratory. Raw FMWW has been collected several times, and its quality has been statistically characterized for pH, total suspended solids (TSS), total dissolved solids (TDS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), NH4+-N, and PO43−-P which are found to be 6.47, 5201 mg/L, 4230 mg/L, 4460 mg/L, 3165 mg/L, 472 mg/L, and 150 mg/L, respectively, on an average. The microbial inoculum has been developed in the laboratory and used for the treatment of FMWW. Removal of COD and NH4+-N has been found to be as high as 95% and 94%, respectively, corresponding to the initial COD of 1050 mg/L and initial NH4+-N of 130 mg/L, after a reaction time of 24 hours in the presence of initial mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) as 125 mg/L. From the experimental data, different kinetic constants viz. Y, kd, k, and Ks have been estimated for appropriate bioreactor design.