Bio-degradation of oily food waste employing thermophilic bacterial strains

The objective of this work was to isolate a novel thermophilic bacterial strain and develop a bacterial consortium (BC) for efficient degradation oily food waste. Four treatments were designed: 1:1 mixture of pre-consumption food wastes (PrCFWs) and post-consumption food wastes (PCFWs) (T-1), 1:2 mixture of PrCFWs and PCFWs mixture (T-2), PrCFWs (T-3) and PCFWs (T-4). Equal quantity of BC was inoculated into each treatment to compare the oil degradation efficiency. Results showed that after 15 days of incubation, a maximum oil reduction of 65.12 ± 0.08% was observed in treatment T-4, followed by T-2 (55.44 ± 0.12%), T-3 (54.79 ± 0.04%) and T-1 (52.52 ± 0.02%), while oil reduction was negligible in control. Results indicate that the development of oil utilizing thermophilic BC was more cost-effective in solving the degradation of oily food wastes and conversion into a stable end product.