(423g) Enhanced Biodegradability Assessment of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon By Implementing a Novel Bioaugmentation Strategy of Indigenous Bacterial Consortium

Petroleum industry is the of the main sectors of the world’s energy production. A huge amount of petroleum sludge generates during crude oil processing. Being significant in the amount and toxicity of petroleum sludge cause a serious issue to the environment and human health worldwide. The current research intends to isolation and identification of petroleum hydrocarbon degrading bacterial strains from the habitat petroleum refinery sludge. Biodegradation of total petroleum hydrocarbon of petroleum refinery sludge in liquid media by a bacterial consortium having pure culture of four bacterium was performed. The four bacterial strains isolated from the petroleum sludge are Dietzia sp. IRB191, Dietzia sp. IRB192, Staphylococcus sp. BSM19 and Stenotrophomonas sp. IRB19. Implementation of novel bioaugmentation strategy was carried out to enhance the biodegradation potential of total petroleum hydrocarbons. Total petroleum hydrocarbon present in the sludge was determined by liquid-liquid solvent extraction. Further, the petroleum fractions were determined by column chromatography. The characterization of oil sludge was performed by ICP-AES, GC-FID, FTIR, SEM analysis. The oil contents asphaltene (50%), and the maltene fraction comprised of 52 ± 3.5% aliphatic, 39 ± 2.5% aromatics, and 9 ± 1% polar fractions, respectively. The ICP-AES analysis depicted that petroleum sludge contains 11 heavy metals (Pb, Cu, Ni, Zn, Fe, Hg, Cd, Mn, As, Cr, and Co) and six metals (Be, Na, Mg, K, Ca, Al). The consortium degrades 77 ± 2.5 %of TPH, whereas the pure culture showed 59-65 % in 2% (w/v) of petroleum sludge in mineral salt media. The degradation of TPH showed a better fit to first order kinetics. This result specified that the developed microbial consortium is suitable for bioremediation process in contaminated oily sludge sites. Considering the high production, toxicity and carcinogenic potential of PRS towards humans, the biotreatment of TPH employing biodegradation is an efficient ecofriendly strategy.