Improving Tannery Wastewater Treatments Using an Additional Microbial Treatment with a Bacterial–Fungal Consortium

Simple Summary Several large tanneries operate in Saudi Arabia. The tanneries produce more than 15,000 pieces of leather per day and 200 metric tons of wastewater per day. Leather manufacturing is a highly polluting activity throughout the world, and in many places, it is not known how efficient the wastewater treatments in the factories are. This was found to be the case in Saudi Arabia, where we revealed insufficient treatments in all four of the factories that we studied. We propose here an additional biological treatment using a bacterial–fungal consortium. Bacteria and fungi were isolated from tannery wastewaters, and their collagenase and gelatinase activities were measured to discover their potential to clean tannery wastewater. Different single bacteria and fungi and their consortia were used in the experiment to find the most suitable species for the treatment. The treatment appeared to be efficient, reducing almost all parameters to below the environmental regulation limit for wastewater discharge to the environment in Saudi Arabia. Abstract Environmental pollutants such as toxic heavy metals and oxygen-demanding solids are generated by leather manufacturing. In most tanneries, wastewaters are treated with physico-chemical methods but overly high levels of pollutants remain in surface waters. The efficiency of tanning wastewater treatment with conventional techniques was evaluated in four tanneries in Saudi Arabia. It was observed that the wastewaters contained high amounts of pollutants, needing further treatment. We isolated microorganisms from the wastewaters and carried out experiments to treat the effluents with different bacteria, fungi, and their consortia. We hypothesized that a consortium of microorganisms is more efficient than the single microorganisms in the consortium. The efficiency of five single bacterial and five fungal species from different genera was tested. In a consortium experiment, the efficiency of nine bacterial–fungal consortia was studied. The bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum and the fungus Acremonium sp. were the most efficient in the single-microbe treatment. In the consortium treatment, the consortium of these two was the most efficient at treating the effluent. The factory wastewater treatment reduced total dissolved solids (TDS) from 1885 mg/L to 880 mg/L. C. glutamicum treatment reduced TDS to 150 mg/L and Acremonium sp. to 140 mg/L. The consortium of these two reduced TDS further to 80 mg/L. Moreover, the factory treatment reduced BOD from 943 mg/L to 440 mg/L, C. glutamicum to 75 mg/L, and Acremonium sp. 70 mg/L. The consortium reduced BOD further to 20 mg/L. The total heavy-metal concentration (Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, and Pb) was reduced by the factory treatment from 43 μg/L to 26 μg/L and by the consortium to 0.2 μg/L. The collagen concentration that was studied using hydroxyproline assay decreased from 120 mg/L to 39 mg/L. It was shown that the consortium of the bacterium C. glutamicum and the fungus Acremonium sp. was more efficient in reducing the pollutants than the single species. The consortium reduced almost all parameters to below the environmental regulation limit for wastewater discharge to the environment in Saudi Arabia. The consortium should be studied further as an additional treatment to the existing conventional tannery wastewater treatments.