Research Journal of Chemistry and Environment

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Utilization of Industrial Waste as a Fertilizer in ornamental plants

Devi Anuradha, Singhal Anupam, Gupta Rajiv, Verma Sanjay Kumar and Singh Arun Nihal

Industrial waste treatment and its disposal are the major challenges in developing countries. In India, approximately 960 million tonnes of waste are generated annually. Metallurgical industries generate about 39.5 million tonnes of inorganic waste which contains heavy metals. Moreover, metallurgical waste treatment and disposal are the main concerns of researchers. In the present study, steel industry pickling sludge and copper industry tailing waste are used as fertilizer in plantation of oleander plant. The log of plant study shows that the copper tailing and pickling sludge mixture generate promising results. Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) studies the effect of heavy metals in plants uptakes. Barium (Ba) is present in the soil of study area and the plant uptake Ba as a contaminant. It has been observed that Ba content is reduced by 90%, therefore Ba contamination can be reduced by uptake in oleander plant. Uptake of other heavy metals is immaterial.

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Manurial value and pollution potential study of effluent and sludge produced from biogas digester run on bagasse and press mud admixture

Bartakke Ganesh Rajendra and Deshmukh Hanamantrao Vitthal

Bagasse and press mud are considered as major sugar industry wastes and if they are not treated properly, may cause environmental pollution. Biomethanation of bagasse and press mud admixture is considered as a valuable method for disposal of these wastes. In the present study, chemical characterization of effluent and sludge was carried out to determine manurial value and pollution potential. Biomethanation was carried out in 20 L capacity digesters with 20 days retention time. Effluent and sludge generated from the digester were used for physicochemical characterization. N, P, K value in effluent and sludge were found to be 1200, 100, 50 mg/L and 22600, 760, 440mg/L respectively. Other microelements like Iron, Manganese, Zinc and Copper were present in considerable amount. Total solids, volatile solids, BOD, COD and MPN of coli forms of the effluent and sludge were determined to know pollution load. Biomethanation process in general leads to produce biogas, good quality fertilizer and also helps to reduce pollution load caused by sugar industry waste.

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Sustainable Approach for Bioethanol Production from Deoiled Rice Bran by Zymomonas mobilis MTCC 92

Beliya Esmil, Tiwari Kishan Lal and Jadhav Shailesh Kumar

Bioethanol obtained from fermentation of lignocellulosic substrates is an important biofuel. This process is an eco-friendly and sustainable approach for conversion of carbohydrate rich biomass into bioethanol. In this context, present work deals with bioethanol production from Deoiled Rice Bran (DORB) using Zymomonas mobilis MTCC 92 in two different forms - free and immobilized in batch fermentation separately. Different fermentation parameters were optimized and also supplemented with different inorganic nutrient sources to enhance its production. The results revealed that inoculum size (1.5% v/v) of Zymomonas mobilis MTCC 92 at pH 6, temperature 30ºC and 48 h of fermentation period in static condition was optimized for maximum bioethanol 8.26±0.12 g/L with a yield of 0.42 g/g. In nutrient supplementation, ~17% increment in bioethanol was found on addition of MgSO4 (2mM concentration). In case of immobilized cells its production increased by 5.1% with 2% more conversion rate of sugar into bioethanol than that of free cells. Further, immobilized cells were reused and active for four more fermentation cycle, with 3.05% decreased bioethanol in fifth cycle. These results suggested that DORB employed with immobilized cells for bioethanol production would be a new sustainable method with economic viability approach.

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Aspergillus flavipes-M1 and Penicillium chrysogenum-M2: The potent hydrolytic molds from biogas digester run on vegetable waste

Patil V.S. and Deshmukh H.V.

Vegetable waste is produced in large quantities during harvesting, poor and inadequate transportation, storage facilities and processing of vegetables. The disposal of vegetable waste is a very serious problem. Vegetable waste can be used as a substrate for biomethanation. Biomethanation is a microbial treatment process that transforms organic matter into biogas and manure. Bacteria, yeasts, molds and actinomycetes are involved in the production of biogas. The biomethanation experiment was carried out in 5 litre biogas digester under ambient temperature conditions. The present study deals with the study of molds from biogas digester effluent. The mold isolates obtained were tested to determine their potential to produce amylolytic, proteolytic, lilpolytic, cellulolytic and ligninolytic enzymes by using standard methods. The two potent hydrolytic mold isolates were subjected to 18 S rRNA analyses and were identified as Aspergillus flavipes-M1 and Penicillium chrysogenum-M2. These mold isolates may have important role during the production of biogas.

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Adsorptive Removal of Safranin from Wastewater using Zeolite-iron oxide Magnetic Nanocomposite

Dwivedi Mithalesh Kumar and Sharma Pragati

The discharge of dye effluents into the natural streams not only is aesthetically displeasing but also impedes light penetration, thus upsetting biological processes within stream and therefore required treatment before discharge into water bodies. In the present studies, zeolite was synthesized from coal fly ash by alkaline hydrothermal treatment and mixed with magnetite nanoparticles in suspension to produce zeolite-iron oxide magnetic nanocomposite. It was used as low cost adsorbent for the removal of safranin dye from wastewater of textile industry. Magnetite nanoparticles in suspension were synthesized by precipitating iron ions in NaOH solution. The morphology of nanocomposite was characterized by XRD, EDX, FTIR and SEM. Batch studies were carried out to study the effect of pH, adsorbent doses, adsorbate concentration, temperature and contact time. The results of batch studies revealed that the adsorption of safranin was strongly pH dependent and maximum Safranin removal was observed at equilibrium pH of 9.0. Optimum adsorbent dose, contact time and temperature were found to be 10 g/l, 180 minutes and 303 K respectively. Effect of varying initial safranin concentration was also investigated to study the removal efficiency of adsorbent. Kinetic studies were performed to have an idea of the mechanistic aspects and to obtain the thermodynamic parameters of the process. The results also showed that adsorption decreased with increase in temperature thereby showing the process exothermic in nature. The adsorption of safranin onto nanocomposite followed pseudo-first-order kinetics. Adsorption data have also been correlated with both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models The Langmuir isotherm was found to fit the experimental data better than the Freundlich isotherm. The results indicated that zeolite from fly ash- iron oxide magnetic nanocomposite, was a potential adsorbent for field application in removal of contaminants from aqueous solution.

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Molecular Phylogenetic Analysis of Soil bacteria

Mrunalini B.R. and Girisha S.T.

The molecular phylogeny for five strains (bearing accession numbers KR856284, KR856288, KR856287, KR856286 and KR856285) was constructed for a collection of soil bacteria isolated from different soil types. Sequences from 16s rRNA gene amplified with universal primers were used to infer evolutionary significance and were concatenated to infer a composite molecular phylogeny within the species. The isolates from each taxa formed tight species clusters in the individual gene trees aligned in BIOEDIT and constructed using MEGA7, Neighbour-Joining(NJ) and UPGMA methods were adopted as a comparative account suggesting the existence of evolutionary relationship to traditional species designations. The resulting sequence data and gene trees provide the first data set to analyses the evolutionary significance of soil bacteria from varied environments. The results showed similarity to Rhodococcus pyridinivorans, Arthrobacter koreensis, Alkaligenes faecalis, Pseudomonas pleicoglossicid and Bacillus licheniformis with bootstrap values of 100,84,100,100 and 70 respectively.

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Sulfate and carbonation reactivity in cement mortar incorporate with rice straw ash

Munshi Surajit and Sharma Richi Prasad

Due to many environmental concerns, the cementitious material got chemically effected which decreases the durability of construction. To sluggish the chemical attack and the need to conserve energy, various research efforts have been directed toward the utilization of environmental waste materials. In this study, the effect of sulfate and carbonation reactivity on mortar made with Portland rice straw ash (RSA) cement has been focused. The micro structural behavior of sulfate on the rice straw ash cement particles has been studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging. To study the exploit of sulfate in mortar incorporate with RSA at different percentage, soundness (Le Chatelier and autoclave), setting (initial and final) time and compressive strength tests were performed. Through chemical analysis, it has been observed that RSA attains about 79% of silica. The results show that the carbonation depth increases as the incorporation of RSA increases but the sulfate reactivity tests show that RSA decreases the amount of sulfate attack of about 30% and increases about 8% of compressive strength compared to that of OPC in cement mortar.

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Water based microemulsion from jatropha (Jatropha curcas) seed oil and its in-vitro antifungal activity against soil borne plant pathogenic fungi

Prajapati Raj Mani, Singh Upma, Agarwal Akriti and Thakur Lalitesh Kr.

In present study, water based (o/w) microemulsions were developed from seed oil of Jatropha curcas using non-ionic surfactant and their in-vitro bio-efficacy was evaluated against Rhizoctonia solani and sclerotium rolfsii plant pathogens. Oil in water microemulsions were formulated using Igepal BC 10 R, Tween 80 surfactants and n-butanol as co-surfactant. Developed formulation passed all physico-chemical parameters. Oil in water (o/w) microemulsion regions were investigated using pseudo ternary phase diagrams at different surfactant and co-surfactant ratio (2:1, 4:1, 9:1 and 19:1) for both surfactants. The LD50 values of developed microemulsion F-3 (2.5 % oil) were observed 111.81 and 60.66 mg/L while that of F-6 (2.5%) were observed 5.24 and 455.90 mg/L against R. solani and S. rolfsii fungi. LD50 values of jatropha seed oil were found at 1031.79 and 38137.88 mg/L against R. solani and S. rolfsii which clearly indicates that the developed formulations are more effective than the oil. Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) showed that particles size of developed F-3 and F-6 formulations was in the range of 65.39 to 100.48 nm and 40.38 to 80.45 nm respectively. These formulations can be used as a bio-fungicide.

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Effect of silicon on nitrogen use efficiency, yield and nitrogen and silicon contents in rice under loamy sand soil

Malav Jugal K. and Ramani V. P.

A field experiment was conducted during kharif seasons of 2014 and 2015 on loamy sands soil at Agriculture Research Station, Anand Agricultural University, Jabugam, Gujarat (India) to assess the effects of silicon on nitrogen use efficiency, rice yield and nutrient status at harvest of rice (Oryza sativa L.). The experiment encompassed four levels of nitrogen viz. 0, 75, 100 and 125 kg N ha-1 from ammonium sulphate and four levels of silicon viz. 0, 200, 400 and 600 kg Si ha-1 from calcium silicate. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design (Factorial) with three replications. Results revealed that individual application of nitrogen at 125 kg ha-1 and Si at 600 kg ha-1 produced the highest grain and straw yields of rice. With respect to N and its use efficiency, 100 kg N ha-1 was found optimum. Silicon reduced the agronomic efficiency as well as apparent N recovery while physiological efficiency was higher at 400 kg Si ha-1. The effect of N and Si and their interaction was found to be significant for available N and Si content in grain and straw at harvest of rice crops under loamy sand soils.

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