Abstract
Pharmaceutical compounds (PhCs) are widely prevalent environmental contaminants, with recalcitrant behaviour to conventional biodegradation processes and harmful effects to the ecosystem and human health. Hence, developing an eco-friendly cost-effective process exploring the microbial agents appeared to be promising for the treatment of PhC contaminated effluents. A consortium of the previously isolated and identified South African indigenous fungal strains, namely Aspergillus niger, Mucor circinelloides, Trichoderma longibrachiatum, Trametes polyzona and Rhizopus microspores was used in a non-sterile stirred fluidized bioreactor (NSFB) to perform the simultaneous biodegradation of selected PhCs. The degradation of the PhCs, namely carbamazepine (CBZ), diclofenac (DCF) and ibuprofen (IBP) as well as their transformation metabolite compounds was carried out using the SPE-UPLC/MS. Here are presented data with regard to the NSFB design, the effect of the concentration of carbon source on the growth of a fungal consortium in the NSFB, the fungal mycelial morphology, and the assessment of the physicochemical parameters. The data displayed the stoichiometric reactions of the transformation fragments and their mass spectrum. For better understanding of the data presented in the present paper, please refer to the original paper "Degradation of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites in non-sterile stirred fluidized bioreactor driven by a fungal consortium" [1].