Filamentous fungi and natural supports as a carrier in moving bed biofilm reactors for ecological treatment of halieutic industrial effluent

In this work, a biological treatment of fishing industry wastewater has been studied in a fluidized biofilm bed reactor moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) using natural media to insure biofilm colonization. Sardine’s scales, drum’s scales and snail’s shells are agro-industrial waste available used in this work as a support for colonization in presence of Penicillium chrysogenum and Aspergillus niger, for the objective of optimizing the yields of the depollution and to make it more economical and ecological. For all pollution parameters, results show that this new MBBR biological treatment design offers comparable performance over the conventional design, which engages conventional Kaldnes carriers made of plastic. The study also highlights the effect of the nature of the support as well as of the biomass on biological treatment. The use of Sardine’s scales allows better treatment of the chemical oxygen demand, on the other hand, the use of the drum’s scales and snail’s shells allows better treatment of the suspended matter and total nitrogen. The correlation between the pollution parameters as well as the intrinsic properties of the various supports in a multidimensional statistical analysis, highlighted the implication of the hydrophobicity and the specific surface to improve the quality of the biological treatment, by the relation that they have to explain the biofilm formation.