Reduction of Surface Tension of Petroleum Using Hydrocarbon Degrading Bacterial Activity

Abstract

Hydrocarbon degrading bacteria produce biosurfactants, which facilitate the biodegradation process. This is the first step towards getting access to interactions between the bacteria's hydrophilic surface and the hydrophobic surface of the hydrocarbons. Due to their amphipathic nature, biosurfactants facilitate this interaction. The focus of the study is to obtain hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria isolates and evaluate biosurfactant activity in reducing water surface tension. Hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria were isolated from contaminated marine sediment samples and consequently cultured on artificial seawater media with the addition of petroleum hydrocarbons as a carbon source. Surface tension reduction of biosurfactants was measured using a digital K20-EasyDyne tensiometer (KRÜSS: Hamburg, Germany). The study indicates that the isolates have biodegradation activity and reduced water surface tension by 22.14 mN/m, the data demonstrated that biosurfactant production was most effective on the third day of the exponential phase incubation. These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria to produce biosurfactants as biodegradation agents to solve the problem of oil pollution.