Formulation of Effective Microorganism [EM] to Analyse its Impact on Municipal Wastewater Management

Abstract

Discharging wastewater from households, industries, and other sources into the environment without treatment hurts the ecosystem as well as people’s quality of life by causing negative impacts on all living species, including health concerns to humans such as diarrhoea which kills 3,50,000 Indian children annually and only 33% of India’s urban wastewater is treated. The majority of energy is dedicated solely to the aeration process, which regulates the degradation of organic matter (sludge) found in wastewater, which is one of the most critical issues in wastewater treatment. As a result, the goal of this research is to develop long-term strategies for degrading organic materials using Effective Microorganisms Technology (EM). EM, also known as Effective Microorganism, is a carefully selected and proportioned liquid culture of fermenting microorganisms. In this study, three microorganisms were isolated from various sources, including soil, yogurt, and milk by serial dilution and spread plate technique, each isolate was made into a pure culture after incubation. They were identified by the VITEK method as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Lactobacillus sporogenes, and Candida albicans. The microbial consortium was then formed by incubating all three organisms in a nutrient broth that had been modified. Each microorganism culture and formulated microbial culture were added to sewage samples taken in Erlenmeyer flasks. All samples were tested for physico-chemical parameters such as pH, BOD, COD, TDS, TSS, SO4 ²– and Cl- after a three-day incubation period at room temperature. The standard deviation method was used for statistical analysis and Microsoft Power BI was used to visualize the results. Lactobacillus sporogenes was the only culture that showed a significant reduction in all parameters except one when compared to other cultures that showed a reduction in most parameters except a few. As a result, Lactobacillus proved to be effective in wastewater treatment when compared with other cultures. Further research is required to determine its true potential.

Innovative Microorganisms in Environmental Cleanup: Effective Microorganism-Based Bioprocesses

“…The bioremediation of priority pollutants (drug residues, heavy metals, oil hydrocarbons) has been achieved with magic fungi [35]. In domestic wastewater treatment studies with EMO solutions obtained by different methods, Kavitha and Vani [36] and Dipali et al [37] provided a sustainable treatment. Velmurugan and Pandian [38] investigated the effectiveness of EMOs in terms of quality in food industry effluent in their study using a commercial EMO comprising Rhodopseudomonas sp., Lactobacillus sp., and Saccharomyces sp.…”