Biodegradation of Diethylketone by Penicillium sp. and Alternaria sp. – A Comparative Study Biodegradation of Diethylketone by Fungi

Abstract

Two contaminating fungi were isolated from a bioreactor containing diethylketone and Streptococcus equisimilis, subsequently characterized at molecular level and identified as belonging to the Alternaria and Penicillium genera. The ability of these fungi to biodegrade DEK is evaluated. The kinetic parameters are estimated using four growth kinetic models for biodegradation of organic compounds available in literature. The experimental data for Alternaria sp. and Penicillium sp. was found to be better fitted by the Haldane and the Luong respectively. Biodegradation rate kinetics was evaluated using zero-order, pseudo-first order, pseudo-second order and three-half order models. The pseudo-second-order model was found suitable for all the concentrations of DEK tested for the biodegradation assays using Penicillium sp. whereas for the Alternaria sp. this model just describes properly the assays with initial concentrations of DEK higher than 0.5 g/L. The percentage of biodegraded DEK were approximately 100%, for all the initial concentrations tested.

Biosorption of Multicomponent Solutions: A State of the Art of the Understudy Case

“…The team of the Centre of Biological Engineering from the University of Minho, Portugal, has also been contributing to the study and understanding of (i) the scale-up of biosorption processes from a laboratory scale to a pilot scale and (ii) the increase of solution complexity to be decontaminated, evolving from single-component solutions to multicomponent solutions, mixing organic and inorganic compounds [3,4,7,9,15,24], the main subject of this chapter.…”

“…The increased use of organic compounds in almost, if not all, industrial sectors as well as in household activities and consequent discharge and accumulation into the environment has increased in an extremely significant way in the past years [2,[12][13][14]. Most of these compounds are extremely toxic to humans due to (i) their general carcinogenic and mutagenic properties, (ii) their capacity to form intermediates with the same or even the higher level of toxicity [15] and (iii) their persistence and mobility into the different environmental matrices [7].…”

“…Although chemical precipitation, reverse osmosis, complexation, solvent extraction, ion exchange, adsorption on granular activated carbon, condensation, thermal degradation, oxidation and incineration comprise the conventional abiotic methods usually employed to remove different types of pollutants from effluents [7], biotic methods such as water purification treatments and standard sewage as well as auxiliary reed bed and wetlands approaches [18] have been used for many years. The outstanding ability of microorganisms to detoxify organic and inorganic pollutants [15,18] and to the downside of the abiotic methods which can be summarized (i) as expensive, (ii) not environmentally friendly and (iii) usually dependent on the concentration of the waste [7] makes them an attractive alternative to decontaminate contaminated solutions.…”

Bioremoval of Ni and Cd in the presence of diethylketone by fungi and by bacteria – A comparative study

“…Many industrial activities have led directly and indirectly to the artificial redistribution of organic and inorganic chemicals into the terrestrial and aquatic environment (Morley and Gadd, 1995). The artificial redistribution of these chemicals has resulted firstly in their increasing release and accumulation into the environment, and secondly, they invariably lead to the development of environmental and public health problems (Iş ik, 2008;Fereidouni et al, 2009;Flores-Garnica et al, 2013;Khairy et al, 2014;Costa et al, 2015).…”

“…Ketones are extensively used in food, chemicals, electronics, paint, rubbers, lubricants and pharmaceutical industries and are generally released into the environment by petrol and petrochemical industries (Gemini et al, 2005). Diethylketone (DEK), as almost all the volatile organic solvents, is dangerous to the aquatic life in high concentrations (Costa et al, 2012(Costa et al, , 2015. DEK can react with OH radicals promoting the formation of ozone and other components of the photochemical smog in urban areas (Lam et al, 2012), being persistent in water, soil and air.…”