Abstract
Toxic chemical nature of tannery wastewater makes it difficult to be treated by routine biological treatment processes. Microbes,
already present in tannery wastewater can adapt to these conditions and degrade the organics in tannery wastewater. In the
present contribution, three bacterial electrogenic strains, tolerant to tannery environment, were isolated from soil contaminated
with tannery waste and named as BS1, BS2, and BS3. Tannery wastewater was treated with these pure and mixed consortia of
three bacterial strains in different microbial fuel cells. Comparative analysis was made by treating the tannery wastewater with
foreign microbial consortia (activated sludge inoculum) and with plain wastewater containing only natural habitat microbes,
already present in wastewater. Mixed consortia of electrogenic strains gave best results. Up to 10.38mA current and 94.3 per cent
of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) removal was obtained during 30 days of operation.