Cereal processing waste, an environmental impact and value addition perspectives: A comprehensive treatise. (30th November 2021) - Hassan, Gul
Highlights: Cereal processing industry generates a huge amount of wastes. These cause environmental issues in terms of air, soil and water quality. Major pollutants in cereal processing waste are BOD, COD, DO, sulfur and phosphorus. Physio-chemical treatments are mainly used for pretreatment of the waste. Biological methods are economical and show better efficacy for the waste treatment. Moreover, value added products are generated after treating cereal industry waste. Abstract: This review is to describe various methods used for the treatment of cereal processing wastes and their efficiency to reduce environmental issues. Physico-chemical and biological methods have great potential for the treatment of cereal industrial waste. These methods can be used alone or in combination with effective treatment. Physico-chemical treatments are mostly employed for the pretreatment of cereal processing wastes that helps in reduced sludge formation during biological treatments. Biological treatments are mostly used owing to their high efficiency in removing pollutants, and less expensive than physico-chemical treatments. However, these treatments consume more time as compared to physico-chemical treatments. These treatments also proved to be efficient for a high rate of cereal waste conversion into value-added products. Thus, cereal industrial waste can result in value-added products such as biohydrogen, bioethanol, butanol, biogas and biocoal as biofuels, industrial valued enzymes, biomass, biofertilizer, proteins, organic acids, polysaccharides and few others.