Isolation of hexavalent chromium resistant bacteria from industrial saline effluents and their ability of bioaccumulation

The mixed cultures has been isolated from industrial saline wastewater contaminated with chromium(VI), using enrichment in the presence of 50 mg l−1 chromium(VI) and 4% (w/v) NaCl at pH 8. In this study, the molasses (M) medium was selected a suitable medium for the effective chromium bioaccumulation by the mixed cultures. Eleven pure isolates obtained from mixed cultures and some of them showed high bioaccumulation in the M media containing about 100 mg l−1 chromium(VI) and 4% NaCl. The strain 8 (99.3%) and 10 (99.1%) were able to bioaccumulate more efficient than the mixed culture (98.9%) in this media. But the highest specific Cr uptake was obtained by the mixed cultures followed by strain 8 and 10 with 56.71, 33.14 and 21.7 mg g−1, respectively. Bioaccumulation of chromium(VI) ions by the strain 8 growing in the media with chromium(VI) and NaCl was studied in a batch system as a function of initial chromium(VI) (86.6–547.6 mg l−1) and NaCl (0, 2, 4, 6% w/v) concentrations. During all the experiments, the uptake yield of the strain 8 was highly affected from NaCl concentrations in the medium at high initial chromium(VI) concentrations. But at low chromium(VI) concentration, strain 8 was not affected from NaCl concentrations in the medium. The maximum uptake yield were obtained in the M media with 2% NaCl as 98.8% for 110.0 mg l−1, 98.6% for 217.1 mg l−1, 98.6% for 381.7 mg l−1 and 98.2% for 547.6 mg l−1 initial chromium(VI) concentrations. The strain 8 tolerated a 6% (w/v) NaCl concentration was able to bioaccumulate more than 95% of the applied chromium(VI) at the 97.6–224.4 mg l−1 initial chromium(VI) concentrations. The results presented in this paper was shown that these pure and mixed cultures might be of use for the bioaccumulation of chromium(VI) from saline wastewater.