biosurfactants production during diesel biodegranation by mixed microbial consortia selected from polluted spolls

this work studies the biosurfactants production which enables the diesel biodegradation byusing mixed microbial consortia from polluted sites. it was carried out by culturing three microbial consortia(named as xa, xb and xc) obtained from polluted soils, and enriched in diesel as sole carbon source.batchexperiments were done to study the effects of three variables (temperature,hydrocarbon concentration and theorigin of the consortia) on the diesel biodegradation and the surface tension evolution. the three enrichedconsortia contained similar bacterial genera and degraded diesel with similar efficiencies (approximately 90%).thermal inhibition was observed at 35 ºc. the evolution of surface tension was similar in all experiments: aninitial fast reduction followed by an increase once the diesel had been consumed. all three consortia were foundto be efficient biosurfactants producers. consortia xb and xc had similar low biosurfactant yields (1.3 and1.8 g g-1, respectively) and lower critical micelle concentration values (0.42 and 0.45 g l-1, respectively), whilexa generated a greater quantity of biosurfactants (6.9 gg-1). it was noted that the maximum diesel biodegradationrate increased versus the biosurfactants yields. despite some differences between the consortia due to theirdifferent origins, especially concerning biosurfactants production, the diesel-enrichment process resulted inadapted consortia with similar efficiencies for diesel biodegradation.