The effect of pH on bioremediation potential for the removal of direct violet textile dye by Aspergillus niger

Alkaline and acidic media have been used in the textile dye industry, depending on the fabric nature. The bioremoval of textile direct violet dye by Aspergillus niger fungal strain was studied. The effect of pH on dye bioremoval was investigated at a pH range from 2 to 11. The direct violet dye bioremoval reached maximum with 92.4%, 64.0%, 91.4%, and 62.3 % at pH values of 2, 3, 8, and 9, respectively, at 24 h of incubation. The percentages of removal rate after 72 h incubation were 98.9, 97.3, 94.0, 95.0, 97.0, and 97.3 at pH 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9, respectively. The optimum pH values were 2, 3, 8, and 9 for direct dye removal. At the end of the experiments, the treatment with fungal strain could reduce COD value of synthetic dye solution by 76–91%. Pseudo first and second order kinetic models were applied to evaluate differences in the biosorption rates and uptakes of textile dye. Pre-equilibrium biosorption of direct violet dye onto fungus under different dye concentrations followed a pseudo second order kinetic model with a high degree of correlation coefficients (R2 > 0.99), and the calculated values of qe nearly matched the experimental values of textile dye during the biotreatment process.