ABSTRACT
Kuyukina Maria S. et al. have described a fluidized bed bioreactor for treatment of oilfield effluents. The large surface-to-volume ratio of magnetic Nanoparticles facilitates greater binding capacity as well as catalytic specificity of biomolecules undergoing conjugation. Moreover, susceptibility to magnetic field reportedly prevented contamination of treated effluents by facilitating efficient recovery of biomolecules from mixed liquor. Besides biodegradation, adsorption-based processes have also been widely investigated for treatment of wastewater. However, adsorbents reportedly face quick exhaustion when applied in full-scale setups for treatment of huge quantities of wastewater. Immobilized biomolecules (henceforth referred to as biocatalysts) reportedly exhibit improved efficiency for pollutant degradation, better resilience to fluctuations in environmental parameters like effluent pH, initial concentration of pollutants, ambient temperature and effluent salinity. Immobilization of whole cells may be achieved by enabling cell attachment to support surfaces, cell entrapment in a porous matrix or behind a barrier and/or self-aggregation.
