OZONATION PROCESS TO ENHANCE BIODEGRADABILTY OF PETROLEUM WASTE BY PSEUDOMONAS AERUGINOSA BACTERIA IN MINERAL SALT MEDIUM

Abstract

Contamination of petroleum waste has endangered the environment, yet its processing technology is
not effective and effi cient. It is becaused that by petroleum waste is diffi cult to be degraded by bacteria due
to many complex bonding compounds containned in this oil waste. Therefore, this study used ozonation
as pretreatment process with the aim to enhance the biodegradation process. The variations in operating
conditions performed in this study are dose of ozone and pH. The bacteria used as a degrading agent is
the Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The results show thatozonation process can the enhancebiodegradability
as indicated by the increase of degradation and population growths of bacteria. In addition, the ability
of the bacteria P. aeruginosa in degrading petroleum waste is varied with ozone doses and pH values.
The highest percentage of degradation achieved at dose of 0.53 g ozone/h and pH 7.48 are approx from
56.52% without ozone pretreatment to 79.32% after 7 days incubation.