Resuscitation, isolation and immobilization of bacterial species for efficient textile wastewater treatment: A critical review and update

Given highly complex and recalcitrant nature of synthetic dyes, textile wastewater poses a serious challenge on surrounding environments. Until now, biological treatment of textile wastewater using efficient bacterial species is still considered as an environmentally friendly and cost-effective approach. The advances in resuscitating viable but non-culturable (VBNC) bacteria via signaling compounds such as resuscitation-promoting factors (Rpfs) and quorum sensing (QS) autoinducers, provide a vast majority of potent microbial resources for biological wastewater treatment. So far, textile wastewater treatment from resuscitating and isolating VBNC state bacteria has not been critically reviewed. Thus, this review aims to provide a comprehensive picture of resuscitation, isolation and application of bacterial species with this new strategy, while the recent advances in synthetic dye decolorization were also elaborated together with the mechanisms involved. Discussion was further extended to immobilization methods to tackle its application. We concluded that the resuscitation of VBNC bacteria via signaling compounds, together with biochar-based immobilization technologies, may lead to an appealing biological treatment of textile wastewater. However, further development and optimization of the integrated process are still required for their wide applications.