Abstract—Nowadays, food industrial unctuous wastes represent a serious problem in industrial wastewater treatment processes. As a consequence of their hydrophobic characters, their emission results in dramatic environmental and economical effects. Unctuous materials, depositing in the pipelines, block the waste flow, furthermore reduce the efficacy of the wastewater treatment. However, bioremediation processes - using microorganisms to degrade these hazardous materials - can provide a solution for this problem. Several rhodococci are able to assimilate many hydrophobic materials converting them into biomass and CO₂. These bacteria use surfactants for making these hydrophobic materials suitable for aqueous bioconversion processes. Additionally, surfactant producing bacteria are capable to decompose many types of hydrocarbons present in diesel oil or dead oils, as well. Rhodococci also have monooxygenase enzymes capable to catalyze the oxidation of numerous hazardous hydrocarbons. Moreover, these strains might harbor lipase enzymes as well, which might help in the degradation of unctuous wastes, such as pig lard or poultry fat.
In this study, our aim was to demonstrate the qualitative ability of Rhodococcus sp. strain to degrade unctuous wastes released by food industry and domestic activity. The strain shows high similarity in its physiology to the R. erythropolis PR4 (NBRC 100887), but apparently of their surfactants are different. Nevertheless, this Rhodococcus sp. MK1 strain was able to use pig lard and poultry fat as sole carbon sources in minimal medium.

Index Terms—Bioremediation, rhodococci, unctuous wastes, surfactants.

Ágnes Kis is with the Doctoral School of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science and Informatics, University of Szeged, Hungary (e-mail: kisa@brc.hu).
Krisztián Laczi is with the Doctoral School of Biology, Faculty of Science and Informatics, University of Szeged, Hungary (e-mail: lkrisz@brc.hu).
Gábor Rákhely and Katalin Perei are with the Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Informatics, University of Szeged (e-mail: rakhely@brc.hu, perei@brc.hu).

 

Cite:Ágnes Kis, Krisztián Laczi, Andrea Hajdú, Árpád Szilágyi, Gábor Rákhely, and Katalin Perei, "Efficient Removal of Unctuous Wastes from Wastewater," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 395-397, 2013.