Biodegradation of Petrochemicals Using Bacterial Strains Isolated from Oil Contaminated Soil

Abstract

Contamination of natural environment with oil products results in recalcitrant pollution; either soil or atmospheric with volatile hydrocarbons. Petroleum hydrocarbons manifest hazardous effects on not only on flora and fauna but ais also carcinogenic to human health. Earlier, many traditional techniques were used to treat such hydrocarbons on large scale. Bioremediation technique is considered environment friendly due to relatively low cost and utilizing a natural microbial to reduce the concentrations and toxicity of various chemicals, aromatic, and aliphatic hydrocarbons. In this context, this study was conducted to estimate the biodegradation of hydrocarbons from naturally occurring bacteria in the environment. The contaminated oil sludge was subjected to mineralization; to enhanced the growth of naturally occurring bacteria in the samples, taken from sites renowned for automobiles workshops and repairing in Islamabad. After inoculation and incubation of bacterial cells these are imperiled into the set dilutions with normal saline and oil in specific ratios to calculate the degradation rate of petrochemicals after 9 weeks. pH is observed regularly to estimate the effect of concentration of oil consumption by bacterial cells in dilutions during the process of degradation. Growth of microbes were observed by using UV spectrometer. Analytical results of GCMS and FTIR shows that degradation in dilutions takes place at high rate.