also adjusted to 4.5 in order to suit growth and metabolism of the
immobilized fungus. Initially, experiments were carried out by
diluting thewastewater with an equal volume of distilledwater and
feeding by means of a peristaltic pump (MICLINS, India). Later
experiments were performed with the wastewater diluted with an
equal volume of the aforementioned media containing no glucose
and glucose at different concentrations in the range 1e10 g/l.
Finally, glucose in the media was replaced by molasses (4 g/l) and
mixed with the wastewater (1:1) in order to evaluate its utility as
a cheaper carbon source than glucose in treating the wastewater.
The various stages of continuous reactor operations followed in the
study are presented in Table 3. During the experiments, samples of
wastewater were collected from the outlet of the reactor, centrifuged
at 10,000 g for 10 min to remove any biomass and analyzed
for colour, sugar concentration, enzyme activities and COD as discussed
in the next subsection.