bioremediation of alkane hydrocarbons using bacterial consortium from soil

Background: contamination of soil with organic pollutants is one of the most important environmental challenges. bioremediation is a simple and economical method for treatment of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil. objectives: the purpose of this study was to investigate the simultaneous bioremediation of n-hexadecane and n-dodecane from soil in an s-sbr using two types of bacterial consortium isolated from oil contaminated soils and compost. methods: in this study, s-sbr reactor was used at a pilot scale. for polluting the soil, agricultural soil was used. the n-hexadecane and n-dodecane were analyzed with gc-fid. two microbial consortiums type a (acinetobacter radioresistence, bacillus subtilis and pseudomonas aeruginosa) and type b (ochrobactrum oryzae, bacillus sp. and sphingomonas yanoikuyae) were used. type a and b were isolated from soil and compost, respectively. results: maximumsimultaneous bioremediation of n-hexadecane (17.61%) and n-dodecane (28.55%) was done by consortium type a. the maximum simultaneous bioremediation of n-hexadecane and n-dodecane by consortium type b was 13.22% and 19.24%, respectively. conclusions: the findings of this study showed the simultaneous bioremediation of n-hexadecane and n-dodecane in an s-sbr using two types of the bacterial consortium (type a and b) during a three-day period was relatively satisfactory. hydrocarbon removal by bacteria isolated from polluted soils was more than bacteria that had been isolated from compost.