Assessing the efficiency of bacterial consortia for degradation of unused motor oil

Abstract

Contamination by petroleum and its products is an environmental threat in most countries around the world due to its centrality in most anthropogenic activities. Microbes, especially as consortia have been used to clean up petroleum contaminated environments which has proven to be more appropriate compared to the physicochemical techniques. In this study, three bacterial isolates identified as Achromobacter insolitus, Klebsiella variicola and Acinetobacter pittii based on previous studies by Mustafa et al.,(unpublished) were used. The bacteria was obtained from areas of Jinja, Hoima and Kampala. From these three isolates, four bacterial consortia were designed by mixing the single bacterial cultures in the following ratios: (A. insolitus & K. variicola; 1:1), (A. insolitus & A. pittii; 1:1) (K. variicola & A. pittii; 1:1) and (A. pittii, K. variicola & A. insolitus; 1:1:1). Results obtained from this study showed bacterial consortium to have better performance on biodegradation of oil than most of the single isolates.