Evaluation of decolorization mechanism of bicomponent dye wastewater during treatment in the microbial fuel cell

The wastewater of textile dyeing industries is considered as a highly toxic composition that causes the severe biotic risk of the ecosystem. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a promising technology to treat the textile wastewater along with corresponding electricity generation. In this work, the decolorization mechanism of Reactive Blue 4 (RB4) and Acid Red 88 (AR88) dyes in the binary mixture in a MFC using baker’s yeast were studied. The decolorization of dyes was analyzed using spectrophotometry methods such as UV-Vis, FTIR and COD measurement. The results showed that the decolorization on the first day was taken place very fast, which can be attributed to biosorption and bioaccumulation mechanism. The decolorization efficiency for the two dyes was different day to day and the final decolorization of AR88 (96%) was higher than that of RB4 (85%) during the treatment. Also, a significant biodegradation mechanism could be explained by FTIR analysis after the day 4th. The COD removal of synthetic wastewater after 5 days of treatment was 87%.