Gas chromatographic analyses of kerosene bioremediation displayed distinctive pattern of n-alkane degradation

Kerosene, being one of the most commonly spilled petroleum products, needs to be removed from the polluted areas before it spreads over large habitats. Bioremediation is an environmental friendly approach for the cleanup of contaminated sites and exploits the potential of naturally occurring microbial populations or microorganisms with a known ability to degrade the contaminants. Therefore, it is important to get bacterial isolates with high kerosene degradation abilities for their potential use in kerosene bioremediation. For this reason, twenty previously identified hydrocarbon degraders were further analysed for their potential to degrade kerosene. Primary selection of kerosene degraders was done by using conventional enrichment culture containing 1% kerosene as a sole source of carbon. Gas chromatographic (GC) analyses of 17 pre-selected kerosene degraders displayed distinctive degradation pattern of n-alkanes including C-11-C-15, C-17 and C-19 fractions. The bacterial isolates Staphylococcus aureus Ba01, Delftia acidovorans Cd11, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus Fe10, Pseudomonas koreensis Hg11 and Acinetobacter johnsonii Sb01 sharing this distinctive degradation pattern displayed 70-84% degradation abilities in 21-day incubation. Among them, the isolates D. acidovorans Cd11 and A. johnsonii Sb01 with almost 81-84% degradation abilities and 0.08-0.09 mg/mL/day degradation rates showed the highest potential for kerosene bioremediation, respectively.