Effect of transport phenomena of Cladosporium cladosporioides on decolorization and chemical oxygen demand of distillery spent wash

The focus of this report is directed towards the influence of transport properties of fermentation broth in degradation and decolorization of distillery spent wash using Cladosporium cladosporioides. Batch experiment was conducted in a bioreactor for 7 days with 250 rpm at 35 C under optimum bioprocess conditions maintained using control system. Results of the morphological analysis revealed that C. cladosporioides has been observed to form mainly pellets during fermentation under mild agitation. The organism changed from filamentous form to pellet and then breaks, ending with filamentous form. All the models Power law, Bingham plastic, and Herschel–Bulkley fitted the general trend well with high R values ranging from 0.9 to 0.98, indicating shear rate thinning nature of the broth. A maximum decolorization of 72.3 % was achieved with chemical oxygen demand reduction of 74.8 % due to the low viscous and pellet nature of the organism, leading to the transport properties of the fluid. Hence, transport phenomena channalyze the metabolic path way easily and leads to a novel approach for the industries to utilize the spent wash with minimum cost.