Isolation and characterization of hydrocarbon degrading microorganisms from petroleum oil contaminated soil sites

Abstract

Petroleum hydrocarbons are dangerous contaminantsin nature. Today, the use of microorganism forremoving crude oil pollution from contaminated sitesis considered by scientists. The purpose of this researchis to isolate and identify hydrocarbon degradingmicroorganisms from soil. In this study, bacteriaand fungi were isolated from different habitats contaminatedwith petroleum oil, i.e., Petrol pumps, garagesand automobileworkshops. During this fourteen bacteriaand nine fungal isolates were obtained. The screeningtests were conducted to detect the biodegradationof naphthalene by taking optical density at 600 nm byspectrophotometer and it was observed that naphthalenewas degraded within 7 days. Upon examination onmorphological studies and biochemical tests, it is determinedthat these strains belong to bacterial generaPseudomonas sp. Gram negative bacterial isolate PS06give 0.730 OD at 600 nm and Fusarium sp. give 42%naphthalene degradation. It was found that PS06 andFusariumsp. to be the best isolate growing on naphthalenehydrocarbon and degrading them.