Research Article
Biodegradation of Coir Geotextiles Attached Media in Aerobic Biological Wastewater Treatment
| Gopan Mukkulath* and Santosh G. Thampi | |
| Department of civil engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut, Calicut-673 601, Kerala, India | |
| Corresponding Author : | Gopan Mukkulath Department of civil engineering National Institute of Technology Calicut, India Tel: +919961332121 Fax: +914952287250 E-mail: gopan@nitc.ac.in |
| Received July 17, 2012; Accepted September 22, 2012; Published September 24, 2012 | |
| Citation: Mukkulath G, Thampi SG (2012) Biodegradation of Coir Geotextiles Attached Media in Aerobic Biological Wastewater Treatment. J Bioremed Biodeg 3:166. doi: 10.4172/2155-6199.1000166 | |
| Copyright: © 2012 Mukkulath G, et al. This is an open-a ccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
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Abstract
Coir is a hard and tough organic fibre, rich in cellulose and lignin, and possesses high specific area and wetting
ability - factors which are important for bacterial adhesion in fixed film processes. Few studies have been reported on the durability of coir geotextiles, when used in Civil Engineering applications such as slope protection works. However, its durability when used as the media in biofilters, for wastewater treatment extensively has not been studied yet. Durability of coir geotextiles has been assessed by keeping it in wet condition and measuring the tensile strength of the fibres, at different times. In the present study, coir geotextiles that were used as the attachment media in a biofilter, for treatment of organic rich wastewater was tested for durability. The units were operated as aerobic, gravity flow filters. Different wastewater parameters were employed in each of these runs. Tensile strength of the fibres was determined after each run.
