Effect of microelements (Copper and Zinc) on co-metabolism of TCE with Toluene by Pseudomonas plecoglossicida

Abstract

A type of Pseudomonas sp. microorganism separated from a heavily gasoline contaminated site and determined as Pseudomonas plecoglossicida was assessed for its aerobic co-metabolic removal of Trichloroethylene (TCE) (10mg/L) using toluene (150mg/L) as the growth substrate and evaluated the effect of microelements (Copper and Zinc) on this co-metabolism. The aerobic bioremoval of toluene and TCE simultaneously was investigated under different concentrations of microelements (1 mg/L, 10 mg/L and 100 mg/L). Results from this study showed that under the supplementation of microelements at 1mg/L of Cu2+ and 1mg/L of Zn2+, the removal efficiency for both toluene and TCE was enhanced compared to the results from higher concentrations of microelements (10mg/L and 100mg/L in this study). With higher concentrations of microelements, both removal efficiency of toluene and TCE was enhanced at first and inhibited gradually, except for the concentrations of Cu2+ at 10mg/L and 100mg/L, the removal efficiency of toluene was even inhibited within the first day.