Olive Oil Mill Waste Waters Decoloration and Detoxification in a Bioreactor by the White Rot Fungus Phanerochaete flavido-alba

Olive oil mill wastewater (OMW) is produced as waste in olive oil extraction. With the purpose of treating this highly polluting waste, a number of experiments were conducted in a laboratory-scale bioreactor with the white rot fungus Phanerochaete flavido-alba (P. flavido-alba). It is known that this fungus is capable of decolorizing OMW in static or semistatic cultures at Erienmeyer scale and at 30 °C. The objective of this work was to prove that P. flavido-alba could decolorize OMW in submerged cultures and that it is capable of reducing OMW toxicity at room temperature (25 °C) and in a laboratory-scale bioreactor. In the experiments conducted, manganese peroxidase (MnP) and laccase enzymes were detected; however, unlike other studies, lignin peroxidase was not found to be present. Decoloration obtained after treatment was 70%. The reduction of aromatic compounds obtained was 51%, and the toxicity of the culture medium was reduced by up to 70%. We can therefore state that P. flavidoalba is capable of reducing important environmental parameters of industrial effluents and that prospects are positive for the use of this process at a larger scale, even when working at room temperature.