Developing a method for measurement of dehydrogenase activity in biological wastewater treatment processes applied for toxic compounds degradation

Biological wastewater treatment processes are among the environmentally friendly techniques for degradation of organic compounds. They are also preferred to the physical and chemical processes which are due to the ability of biological processes to treat wide range of organic compounds with lower operational costs. However, biological processes are usually affected by variation in the inlet wastewater quality and quantity. In order to investigate the performance of the wastewater treatment plant, various parameters in case of effluent quality such as COD, BOD, TSS, TDS etc. are required to be measured. Microorganisms in bioreactors use various enzymes to degrade the organic contaminants. Higher toxic organic load on the biological process may lead to the deterioration of the process performance which is due to the reduction in microbial activity of the biomass. Dehydrogenase enzyme produced in biological processes could be used as an indicator for the biological wastewater treatment. Present study introduces a simple and modified method for evaluation of biological wastewater treatment process measuring dehydrogenase activity. In the present study, the effective parameters such as incubation time and types of solvent were investigated and the best procedure is developed for measuring the dehydrogenase activity in biological wastewater treatment process.