Biodegradation has been considered as an ideal technique for total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) contamination, but its efficiency is limited by its application in the field. Herein, an original TPH-degrading strain, SCYY-5, was isolated from contaminated oil sludge and identified as Acinetobacter sp. by 16S rDNA sequence analysis. The biological function of the isolate was investigated by heavy metal tolerance, carbon, and nitrogen source and degradation tests. To enhance its biodegradation efficiency, the response surface methodology (RSM) based on a function model was adopted to investigate and optimize the strategy of microbial and environmental variables for TPH removal. Furthermore, the performance of the system increased to 79.94% with the further addition of extra nutrients, suggesting that the RSM and added nutrients increased the activity of bacteria to meet the needs of the co-metabolism matrix during growth or degradation. These results verified that it is feasible to adopt the optimal strategy of combining bioremediation with RSM to improve the biodegradation efficiency, for contaminated oil sludge.
Keywords: 16S rDNA; Acinetobacter sp.; TPH; biodegradation; bioremediation; response surface methodology (RSM).