Biodegradation of synthetic textile dyes by thermophilic lignolytic fungal isolates

Synthetic dyes are extensively used in different industries like textile dyeing, paper, printing, color, photography, pharmaceutics and cosmetics. These are generally toxic and carcinogenic in nature. If not treated, they will remain in nature for a long period of time as they are recalcitrant. Among these, azo dyes represent the largest and most versatile class of synthetic dyes. Approximately 10-15% of the dyes are released into the environment during manufacture and usage. Various methods are used for dye removal viz. physical, chemical, electrochemical and biological. Advantage of chemical, electrochemical and biological methods over physical involves the complete destruction of the dye, but chemical and electrochemical methods are found to be expensive and have operational problems. So the biological method is preferred over other methods for degradation/decolorization of dyes. In the present study, thermophilic lignolytic fungal culture was isolated from compost/soil/digested slurry/plant debris, were subjected for acclimatization to Remazol Brilliant Blue (RBB) at 0.05% concentration, in the malt extract broth (MEB). The most promising fungal isolates were used for further dye degradation studies. The results suggest that the isolates T10, T14 and T17 as a useful tool for degradation of reactive dyes.