Biodegradation of Petroleum Hydrocarbon Contaminated Wastes: A Review

In industrialized countries petroleum effluents, oily sludge and oil spills are the biggest threat to the environment as they produce toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic substances and contaminating soil and groundwater affecting flora and fauna adversely. Management of this waste material is the biggest challenge to the petroleum industry through conventional methods (pit formation). Petroleum is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons and related compounds generally classified into four fractions: aliphatic, aromatic, polars or resins and asphaltenes. Aromatics and polars are considered as less degradable than aliphatics while asphaltene is classified as non biodegradable. Biodegradation is complete mineralization of organic constituents of wastes into harmless CO₂, water and inorganic components through enzymatic action of microbial populations in environment friendly manner. Moving forward in this direction TERI (Tata Energy and Resources Institute) and IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.) successfully invented a group of microbial consortia named “Oilzapper” and OiliVorous” respectively, which can degrade oily wastes completely. This paper will provide an overview of biodegradation of petroleum wastes by microbial consortia which can be proved beneficial for the students, researchers and industries for their respective innovations.

Microbial consortia ‘Oilzapper’ contain five kind of microbial strains while ‘OiliVorous’ contains six microbial strains.

Both of microbial consortia degrade oily wastes in environment friendly manner.

‘OiliVorous’ is more efficient than ‘oilzapper’ to degrade oily wastes.