Description

Massive wastewater generation and their discharge into nearby river bodies lead to the deterioration of freshwater resources. The best way to combat water scarcity in the future is to treat the generated wastewater for safe discharge. With this perspective, the objective of this thesis was to design and develop biotechnological processes for the efficient treatment of pollutants and contaminants in the aqueous environment. The targeted pollutants were municipal/domestic, agricultural, industrial wastewater, and contaminated groundwater which can majorly contribute to contaminating our freshwater resources. Accordingly, globally concerned model pollutants from different wastewater generating sectors were chosen such as organic matter, nitrogen, phosphate, organic dyes, and fluoride. Traditional biological technologies have several shortcomings, thus, recently developed nature based sustainable technology i.e., Constructed wetland integrated microbial fuel cell (CW-MFC) was adopted. Although, CW-MFC is in its infancy stage and as a result, it still poses several challenges. Hence, for effective organic dyes treatment innovative dual chambered CW-MFC was developed; for improved organics and nitrogen treatment substrate modification using sustainable biochar was explored and enhanced treatment and disinfection were targeted with different CWs technologies followed by BSSF at more than lab scale. Whereas phosphate and fluoride removal was inefficient with CW-MFCs, accordingly, low-cost adsorption technique was adopted. Towards deflouridation, live immobilized algal beads were developed as bio-sorbent whereas, for phosphate removal, industrial waste encapsulated beads were focused as an adsorbent in lab and pilot scale studies. Overall, this thesis attempts to provide a sustainable, economical, and innovative approach toward the treatment of aqueous environment pollutants for a green and clean environment.