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We evaluated the potentials of pure wild microfungi isolated from decaying wood in utilizing diesel as source of carbon/energy and monitoring of their physiological responses via OD and pH gradient fluxes. The fungi diversity was obtained by conventional enrichment culture methods. Pure cultures of tentative fungal species namely: SC1, SC2, SC3, YI and Y2 were tested for their ability to utilize diesel oil as carbon and energy source. From the cultural, morphological and biochemical characterization and comparison with respect to the standard reference of fungi, the wild microfungi tentatively named as SC1, SC2, SC3, YI and Y2 were seemingly the members of Penicil-lum, Aspergillus, Mucor, Candida and Cryptococcus species. The diesel de-pendent growth of the pure microfungi was assessed by monitoring the flux-es in the pH and Optical density OD of the minimal media slurry for 288 hours. There were fluctuations in OD as well as pH values for the different microfungi. The mean pH data 5.90 ± 0.01-7.01± 0.01 and the OD 0.349± 0.001 -1.232 ± 0.002 were obtained. The ability of our fungal isolates to tol-erate diesel and grow in it, suggests that the isolates can be employed as bioremediation agent.

Bioethanol is one of the best alternative form of energy source in place of fossil fuels. In this study, bioethanol was produced from waste paper following a pre-treatment. The isolates used were isolated from fresh palm wine and characterized via standard microbiological methods. The pre-treatment was done using 5%, 10% and 50% concentrations of sulphuric acid and sodium hydroxide respectively. Results obtained showed that the concentration of glucose from the substrates ranged between 0.2-0.8 ppm with 10% sulphuric acid giving the highest glucose yield. The fermentation of the sugar was carried out using Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the production of bioethanol, which was recovered by fractional distillation. From this study, the production of bioethanol from waste paper is a veritable means of shoring up energy deficit especially in the developing countries.