Biosurfactant and Bacterial Cellulose Applied to Textile Effluent Treatment

The textile industry is one of the largest in the world, being of a great economical impact in many countries. The high water consumption and large effluents production with high concentrations of chemical products and residual dyes are amongst the industry’s biggest environmental impacts. The application of biosurfactants (BS) in many processes in this industry is already established. However, its exploration in the effluent treatment stages can still be improved. Natural surfactants have diverse structure, are biodegradable, biocompatible, selective, and have good stability. They can be greatly explored in filtering processes. Bacterial cellulose (BC), a high purity biopolymer, is formed by a three-dimensional (3D) nanofibrillar network, with high water absorption capacity and high tensile strength. The present study aimed to evaluate, individually and in combination, the use of BS and BC both produced in media supplemented with industrial waste, aiming for its application in the treatment of textile effluents. The tests were carried out with synthetic effluents with navy blue dye at concentrations between 7.5 – 30.0 mg/L. BS was added to the effluent in the critical micelle concentration (CMC) of 1x CMC, 3 x CMC and 10 x CMC, to observe the agglutinating action. The BC pellicle with approximate thickness of 3 mm was evaluated as a filtering element. The color removal index of the treated effluent was determined through spectrometry as the parameter of effectiveness. The results showed an efficiency in color removal of up to 45 % solely with BC as a filtering agent and of 65 % when treated with BS before filtration with BC. The results demonstrate the potential of reducing the color parameter with the BS/BC association for a low-cost and sustainable filtration system to be applied in textile effluent treatment.