• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.347-352
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• 2005

The isolated microorganisms, Pseudomonas stutzeri, Raoultella planticola (Klebsiella), Serratia fonticola from petroleum contaminated soil were enriched on benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene as carbon and energy sources, respectively. And the degradation characteristics of BTEX was observed in the mixed BTEX substrates. We found that the BTEX in mixed substrates were degraded more than 50% by three isolated microorganisms. Among three isolated microorganisms, the highest degradation rate was observed in Pseudomonas stutzeri, but the degradation rate was different according to microorganisms. In order to increase the degradation efficiency, we applied the co-culture of isolated three microorganisms. The mixture rate of pseudomonas stutzeri : Raoultella planticola (Klebsiella) : Serratia fonticola was follows ; 1:2:1, 1:1:2, and 2:1:1, respectively. In two co-culture of 1:2:1 and 1:1:2, degradation rate was lower than isolated microorganisms. However, degradation rate became higher than isolated microorganisms and the degradation rate of benzene, toluene, and ethylene was more than 95% in co-culture of 2:1:1. The degradation rate increased through the co-culture of isolated microorganisms, however, the growth rate decreased. This was resulted from the substrate competition between microorganisms. The co-culture of microorganisms is a effective method to increase the degradation efficiency of BTEX and the co-culture mixing rate is a important factor for determination of degradation efficiency.