Enhanced crude oil depletion by constructed bacterial consortium comprising bioemulsifier producer and petroleum hydrocarbon degraders

Mingqian Xia; Dafang Fu; Romy Chakraborty; Rajendra Prasad Singh; Norman Terry

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2019.01.131

Enhanced crude oil depletion by constructed bacterial consortium comprising bioemulsifier producer and petroleum hydrocarbon degraders

Bioresour Technol. 2019 Jun:282:456-463. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.01.131. Epub 2019 Jan 29.

Authors

Mingqian Xia¹, Dafang Fu², Romy Chakraborty³, Rajendra Prasad Singh⁴, Norman Terry⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210096, China; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States; Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3102, United States.
² School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210096, China. Electronic address: fdf@seu.edu.cn.
³ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States.
⁴ School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210096, China.
⁵ Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3102, United States.

PMID: 30889537
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.01.131

Abstract

The aim of this work was to study the production of bioemulsifier by Rhodococcus erythropolis OSDS1, and the improvement of crude oil depletion efficiency using a consortium of petroleum hydrocarbon degraders and OSDS1. The results showed that R. erythropolis OSDS1 produced highly stable bioemulsifier under various salinity (0-35 g/L NaCl) and pH (5.0-9.0) conditions; more than 90% of the initial emulsification activity was retained after 168 h. Emulsification capacity of the bioemulsifier on different petroleum hydrocarbons was diesel > mineral oil/crude oil > gasoline. A mixed bacterial consortium combining OSDS1 and four other petroleum hydrocarbon degraders was constructed. GC-MS results revealed that the constructed consortium achieved 85.26% depletion efficiency of crude oil in 15 days, which was significantly higher than that of individual strains. During the process, alkane hydroxylase gene (alkB) was successfully amplified from the consortium, confirming presence of crude oil degrading enzymes.

Keywords: Bioemulsifier; Constructed bacterial consortium; Crude oil depletion; Rhodococcus erythropolis; alkB gene.

MeSH terms

Hydrocarbons / metabolism*
Petroleum / metabolism*
Rhodococcus / metabolism*
Salinity
Sodium Chloride / pharmacology

Substances

Hydrocarbons
Petroleum
Sodium Chloride