Growth and Optimization Processes of Mixed Microbial Population Degrading Chrysene

Abstract

The response surface methodology (RSM) of chrysene removal was studied using mixedmicrobial culture. The effects of process factors such as initial chrysene concentration, agitationrate and, pH on chrysene degradation were also investigated. Maximum chrysene degradationrates of 60 and 50% were achieved at 300 rpm agitation rate and pH 8, respectively. Chrysenerecoveries were within 51.22% to 72.12%. The numerical optimization process indicated thatthe optimum values for agitation rate, pH, and initial chrysene concentration were 334.3 rpm,8.8 and 40.6 mg/L, respectively, with the desirability of 0.955. However, the second orderquadratic model was statistically significant for the chrysene removal process with goodagreement between the R² (0.9642), adjusted R² (0.9320), and predicted R² (0.8289). Finally,the results obtained from this study highlighted the optimal conditions for chrysene removalfrom an aqueous medium.