Effect of process parameters on the bioremediation of diesel contaminated soil by mixed microbial consortia

• Diesel was used as the sole carbon and energy source by mixed microbial consortia.
• Effect of diesel concentrations, moisture content and biomass dose were examined.
• Diesel concentration and biomass dose showed synergistic influence on CO2 production.
• A maximum diesel mineralization of ∼67% was achieved under the optimized conditions.

This study focused on investigating the key parameters that influences carbon dioxide (CO2) production during the bioremediation of diesel contaminated soil. The effects of diesel concentration, moisture content and biomass dose were investigated in batch experiments, for 20 days, to ascertain the CO2 production and the amount of diesel mineralized. A regression model based on full factorial design of experiments was developed to predict the CO2 production. Based on the F and p values from Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) results, the main effects of process parameters affected diesel bioremediation strongly than the 2-way and 3-way interaction effects. The highest total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) mineralized and the maximum CO2 productions were ∼3000 mg/kg-soil and ∼10,000 mg/kg-soil, respectively, at a diesel concentration of 10,000 mg/kg-soil, 20% moisture content and a biomass dose of 275 mg/kg-soil.

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