Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

FORMULATION OF EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISM [EM] TOANALYSE ITS IMPACT ON MUNICIPAL WASTEWATERMANAGEMENT

M. Kavitha and G. Sangeetha Vani

Abstract

Discharging wastewater from households, industries, and other sources into the environment withouttreatment hurts the ecosystem as well as people’s quality of life by causing negative impacts on all livingspecies, including health concerns to humans such as diarrhoea which kills 3,50,000 Indian children annuallyand only 33% of India’s urban wastewater is treated. The majority of energy is dedicated solely to theaeration process, which regulates the degradation of organic matter (sludge) found in wastewater, which isone of the most critical issues in wastewater treatment. As a result, the goal of this research is to developlong-term strategies for degrading organic materials using Effective Microorganisms Technology (EM).EM, also known as Effective Microorganism, is a carefully selected and proportioned liquid culture offermenting microorganisms. In this study, three microorganisms were isolated from various sources,including soil, yogurt, and milk by serial dilution and spread plate technique, each isolate was made into apure culture after incubation. They were identified by the VITEK method as Pseudomonas aeruginosa,Lactobacillus sporogenes, and Candida albicans. The microbial consortium was then formed by incubating allthree organisms in a nutrient broth that had been modified. Each microorganism culture and formulatedmicrobial culture were added to sewage samples taken in Erlenmeyer flasks. All samples were tested forphysico-chemical parameters such as pH, BOD, COD, TDS, TSS, SO4²- and Cl- after a three-day incubationperiod at room temperature. The standard deviation method was used for statistical analysis and MicrosoftPower BI was used to visualize the results. Lactobacillus sporogenes was the only culture that showed asignificant reduction in all parameters except one when compared to other cultures that showed a reductionin most parameters except a few. As a result, Lactobacillus proved to be effective in wastewater treatmentwhen compared with other cultures. Further research is required to determine its true potential.