Assistance of aminated straw on enhanced biodegradation of phenol through bacteria and potential prediction of machine learning for bioremediation

ABSTRACT How to treat phenol-containing wastewater harmlessly is an urgent problem to be solved. In this study, a kind of biomaterial was prepared through strain PAO1 immobilized on aminated straw to enhance the phenol removal rate and efficiency. The aminated straw assisted PAO1 to increase the phenol degraded concentration from 1,900 to 1,500 mg/L, and shorten the degraded time by 44 h at 1,500 mg/L phenol. The immobilized PAO1 could remove phenol at pH 10 and 11, which was 2.7 and 3.8 times higher than free bacteria, respectively. In addition, the immobilized PAO1 could totally remove phenol, which was twice as high as that of free bacteria, at 4% NaCl stress. Furthermore, the removal efficiency of immobilized PAO1 was higher than that of free bacteria under the stress of various metal ions, especially for Co2+ and Pb2+. The determination coefficients R2 and root mean square error showed that the back propagation artificial neural network model could predict the degradation of phenol under various conditions, saving time and economic cost. The present study envisions that this biomaterial has great potential in the bioremediation of organic pollutions.