Advances in Environmental Research, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2020) 85-95 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/aer.2020.9.2.085 85 Copyright © 2020 Techno-Press, Ltd. http://www.techno-press.org/?journal=aer&subpage=7 ISSN: 2234-1722 (Print), 2234-1730 (Online) Biodegradation of Evercion Blue P-GR and Ostazin Black H- GRN in synthetic textile wastewater by membrane bioreactor system using Trametes versicolor Ülküye D. Gül *1 , Caglayan Acikgoz 2 and Kadir Özan 3 1 Vocational School of Health Services, Biotechnology Application and Research Center, University of Bilecik Seyh Edebali, Bilecik, Turkey 2 Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Bilecik Seyh Edebali, Bilecik, Turkey 3 Pazaryeri Vocational School, University of Bilecik Seyh Edebali, Bilecik, Turkey (Received March 19, 2019, Revised May 9, 2020, Accepted May 12, 2020) Abstract. In this study, the decolorization of Evercion Blue P-GR (EBP) and Ostazin Black H-GRN (OBH) was investigated using white-rot fungi named as Trametes versicolor (T. versicolor) by Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) system. This study involved experiments employing synthetic textile wastewater in Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) system (170 ml), initially inoculated with a pure culture of fungi, but operated, other than controlling pH (4.5±0.2) and temperature (25±1°C), under non-sterile conditions. The effect of dye concentrations on fungal biodegradation was also investigated. The decolorization efficiencies were 98%, 90%, and 87% respectively, for EBP when the initial dye concentration of 50, 100, and 200 mg L -1 were used. However, the decolorization percentages for OBH dye were obtained 95% for 50 mg L -1 dye solution in 2 days and 66% for 100 mg L -1 dye solution in 5 days. Possible interactions between dye molecules and the fungal surface were confirmed by SEM, EDX, and FTIR analyses. Keywords: biodegradation; textile dye; membrane bioreactor; wastewater treatment 1. Introduction The wastewater of the textile industry includes complex pollutants having high concentrations of dyes and changing greatly characteristics (Akram et al. 2016). In the past decades, new techniques have been improved to apply an economic and efficient process for treatment of the textile wastewater such as physicochemical, biochemical, combined treatment processes, and other technologies (Tambunan et al. 2018). Recently, most of the studies have interested in microbial biodegradation of textile dyes in textile effluents (Ganapathy et al. 2018). Several microorganisms such as some bacteria, fungi, and algae can decolorize most of the dyes. A wide variety of fungal strains are known to degrade complex structures of dyes more successfully than bacteria (Fu and Viraraghavan 2001). White rot fungi are known to produce extracellular ligninolytic enzymes (lignin peroxidase (LiP), manganese peroxidase (MnP), and laccase) which have roles in the Corresponding author, Associate Professor, Ph.D., E-mail: ulkuyedudugul@gmail.com