Arcadia Campus, P/Bag X680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. Abstract The demand of crude oil or any other oil by-products across the world and various activities ...
An Interdisciplinary Response to Mine Water Challenges - Sui, Sun & Wang (eds)
Biodegradation of Hydrocarbon Chains of Crude Oil Byproducts by Selected Protozoan Isolates in Polluted Wastewaters L. Kachienga , M. N. B. Momba Department of Environmental, Water and Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science, Tshwane University of Technology, Arcadia Campus, P/Bag X680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. Abstract The demand of crude oil or any other oil by-products across the world and various activities are such as human and industrial activities has led to continuous pollution of various existing fresh water. The study was conducted using three protozoan isolates (Aspidisca sp., Trachelophyllum sp. and Peranema sp) where their growth and biodegradation abilities were screened using crude oil spill rich polluted wastewater in shaking flasks at pH 8 and incubated at 30 ℃ with a speed of 100 rpm for 5 days. Chemical Oxygen Demand, Dissolved Oxygen and growth of protozoan isolates were determined using standard methods. Crude oil concentrations in the samples were analysed using partition gravimetric method. The study revealed that high amount of COD released and over 80% DO were removed from wastewater. The protozoan biomass of 1.00×103 cells/mL was able to degrade crude oil (initial concentration:50 mg/L) decreased their biodegradation capacity to >60%. Statistically, the microbes were found to have a significant difference in their biodegradation ability in different various oily wastewater concentrations (p
