Immobilized microbial consortium for the treatment of phenolic waste-water from petroleum refineries

摘要

An immobilized microbial consortium is formulated which comprises of a synergistic mixture of all the bacterial strains of Aeromonas hydrophila, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus circulans, Yersinia enterocolitica, Enterobacter cloaca and Bacillus brevis. The formulated microbial consortium is immobilized on a non-biodegradable and economically cheaper support. The said immobilized microbial consortium is used for the biodegradation of synthetic phenol as well as phenol present in petroleum refinery effluent. The results of biodegradation obtained with the microbial consortium immobilized on coconut fiber are compared with those obtained with microbial consortium immobilized on well known support. The coconut fiber used for immobilization proved to be a better support than a well known support such as calcium alginate.