Exploration of Organic Compound Degradation Capability of Indigenous Soil Bacteria and their Consortium from Oil Refinery of Assam

Abstract

Spillage and discharges of hydrocarbons occurred due to storage, transportation, refining and processing of petroleum compound, these activities include leakage from oil pipelines, storage tanks, tanker leakage accidents, oil well waxing, overhauls of refineries and production of petrochemical equipment. Petroleum hydrocarbon is a crude mixture of alkane, cyclic alkane, alkene, and aromatic hydrocarbon, which are found to be highly toxic and carcinogenic in nature [1]. Many normal and extreme bacterial species have been isolated and utilized as biodegraders for dealing with petroleum hydrocarbons for bioremediation. This is also indicating that the joint action of multiple functional bacteria requires to achieve the best environmental purification effect for the remediation of petroleum hydrocarbon contamination [2]. The advantages of microbial communities are presented because there are a variety of catabolic genes in a bacterial consortium, and the synergistic effects of these genes are beneficial to achieve the purification of pollutants [3]. In their finding, it was concluded that due to the abundance of alk B and nah genes responsible for the catabolism of hydrocarbons consortium show the maximum degradation as compared to individual isolates.