Biodegradation of chlorobenzene using immobilized crude extracts in packed bed column

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been identified as potential organism to decompose chlorobenzene by its crude extract through immobilization technique. P. aeruginosa was grown on chlorobenzene as sole
source of carbon and energy. Chlorobenzene was used as an inducer to develop specific intracellular enzymes which will decompose chlorobenzene to non toxic substance. Crude cell extracts produced
which contains intracellular enzyme, were immobilized on sodium alginate beads. The beads were packed in a glass column and added with different initial concentration (30, 40 and 50 ppm) of
chlorobenzene to study the kinetics of degradation. Nine sets of combinations of process variables were developed and used to produce crude extracts keeping other parameters constant. The rate of
decomposition of chlorobenzene by immobilized crude extracts was measured at different time intervals and found that 80 to 83% of chlorobenzene can be decomposed with in 35 min. The
immobilized crude extracts were reused for all other experiments and found that immobilization technique can be used for higher capacity conversion of scaled up process.