Effect of process parameters on the bioremediation of diesel contaminated soil by mixed microbial consortia

This study focused on investigating the key parameters that influences carbon dioxide (CO₂) production during the bioremediation of diesel contaminated soil. The effects of diesel concentration, moisture content and biomass dose were investigated in batch experiments, for 20 days, to ascertain the CO₂ production and the amount of diesel mineralized. A regression model based on full factorial design of experiments was developed to predict the CO₂ production. Based on the F and p values from Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) results, the main effects of process parameters affected diesel bioremediation strongly than the 2-way and 3-way interaction effects. The highest total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) mineralized and the maximum CO₂ productions were ~3000 mg/kg-soil and ~10,000 mg/kg-soil, respectively, at a diesel concentration of 10,000 mg/kg-soil, 20% moisture content and a biomass dose of 275 mg/kg-soil.