Bioremediation of malachite green from contaminated water by three microalgae: Neural network modeling

Biological decolorization of the triphenylmethane dye, Malachite Green (MG), by three microalgae, Chlorella, Cosmarium and Euglena species was investigated. Results indicated that the decolorization was dependent on reaction time, initial dye concentration, algal concentration, pH and temperature. The reusability and efficiency of the algae in long term repetitive operations were also examined. Since all of the algae had reasonable reusability in repetitive decolorization operations, the process seems to be biodegradation. An artificial neural network (ANN) model was developed to predict the biological decolorization of MG solution. The findings indicated that the ANN provided reasonable predictive performance (R² = 0.98). The influence of each parameter on the variable studied was assessed, and reaction time and initial pH were found to be the most significant factors, followed by temperature, initial dye concentration and amount of algae. Simulations based on the developed ANN model can estimate the behavior of the biological decolorization process under different conditions.