Effective removal of pharmaceutical impurities and nutrients using biocatalyst from the municipal wastewater with moving bed packed reactor

The presence of antibiotics in the wastewater is one of the important issues related to environmental management. In this study, antibiotics-degrading bacteria were screened from the enriched sewage sludge sample. Among the isolated bacterial strains, Bacillus subtilis AQ03 showed maximum antibiotic tolerance (>2000 ppm). The characterized strain B. subtilis AQ03 degraded sulfamethaoxazole and sulfamethoxine and the optimum nutrient and physical-factors were analyzed. B. subtilis AQ03 degraded 99.8 ± 1.3 % sulfamethaoxazole, and 93.3 ± 6.2 % sulfamethoxine. Sodium nitrate and ammonium chloride were improved antibiotics degradation (<90 %). The optimized conditions were maintained in a moving bed bioreactor for the removal of antibiotics and nutrients from the wastewater. The selected strain considerably produced proteases (109.4 U/mL), amylases (55.1 U/mL), cellulase (9.6 U/mL) and laccases (15.2). In moving bed reactor, sulfamethaoxazole degradation was maximum after 8 days (100 ± 1.5 %) and sulfamethoxazole (100 ± 0) was removed completely from wastewater after 10 days. In moving bed reactor, biological oxygen demand (92.1 ± 2.8 %), chemical oxygen demand (79.6 ± 1.2 %), nitrate (89.4 ± 3.9 %) and phosphate (91.8 ± 1.2) were removed from the wastewater along with antibiotics after 10 days of treatment. The findings indicate that the indigenous bacterial communities and the ability to survive in the presence of high antibiotic concentrations and xenobiotics. Moving bed bioreactor is useful for the removal of nutrients and antibiotics from wastewater.