Feasibility of mixed enzymatic complexes to enhanced soil bioremediation processes

This work deals about the feasibility of using different enzymatic complexes to enhance bioremediation of hydrocarbon polluted soils. These complexes were generated by non defined mixed microbial consortia that were isolated from three different oil contaminated sites at an oil refinery, and enriched through weekly aerobic cultivations using diesel hydrocarbons as the sole carbon source. Extracellular proteins mixtures were produced during laboratory batch diesel biodegradation experiments using the three microbial consortia, and after separation from the biomass and remanent substrate, the proteins production and the enzymatic activity were measured in every cases. The trend of the enzymatic activity of these consortia was similar qualitatively, achieving the maximum at the exponential phase of the standard bacterial growth curve; but one of the consortia (C) reached the highest activity (275.316 U/mg). In a second step of this work, batch bioremediation experiments were done to evaluate the feasibility of such enzymatic complexes using the the one that provided the best results (C) to enhance the hydrocarbon removal from a polluted soil carried out by the microbial consortia.