USE OF Penicillium rubens LBM 081 LIPASES FOR THE BIODEGRADATION OF LIPID-RICH WASTEWATER

ORTELLADO LE; BENÍTEZ SF; VILLALBA LL; ZAPATA PD; FONSECA MI

Congreso; XVII Congreso Argentino de Microbiología General; 2022

Excess lipids cause serious environmental problems such as clogging of the sewer line and thegeneration of an oily layer on the surface of the water that prevents the penetration of oxygen andsunlight, affecting aquatic life. The removal of pollutants is the treatment process through which waterpasses to eliminate any type of pollutant. Existing physicochemical treatment methods for lipid-richwastewater are costly, environmentally unfriendly and pose a secondary pollution problem. The useof enzymes in various industrial sectors is booming, due to the fact that their catalytic capacity hasbeen superior to that of many chemical catalysts or the increasing need to use methods that are lessharmful to the environment. These enzymes have been obtained from different sources: plants,animals and microorganisms. The latter being the most important. Lipases are enzymes that catalyzethe hydrolysis of triacylglycerides at the lipid-water interface. Microbial lipase-mediatedbioremediation (E.C. 3.1.1.3) presents an attractive alternative approach to overcome these problems.With this context in mind, this work focused on the application of lipases produced by the isolation ofPenicillium rubens LBM 081 from the province of Misiones. For this purpose, in the first instance, asupernatant with a lipase activity that reached a titer of 2780 U/mL was used. Subsequently,treatments were carried out using different percentages of the supernatant (26 and 44 %) on syntheticolive effluents (consisting of a mixture of olive oil and non-potable water 2:1) and a household effluent(consisting of a mixture of water, non-potable, plus sunflower and olive oils 2:1:1 obtained after twocycles of use in kitchen frying) in which the removal percentages based on COD and the amount oftotal oils and fats were evaluated for a period of 6, 24 and 48 h at 30°C at 140 rpm. Toxicity tests werecarried out with the treatments that showed the best removal of both COD and oils and fats in botheffluents tested, using Lactuca Sativa seeds, with which the germination index and relative growthindex were calculated. From the analysis of the data obtained, a decrease of 50 % was observed forthe case of the effluent with olive oil using 44 % of supernatant for both COD and the amount of totaloils and fats at 24 hours. While for the case of household effluent, a 4 % and 44 % removal rate wasobtained using 26 % and 44 % supernatant respectively for COD, and a 20% removal rate using 26%supernatant and a 29% removal rate using 44 % supernatant for total oils and fats. Toxicity testsshowed good germination rates of the seeds used and relative growth rates greater than 0.8 in thetreatments carried out with 44 % supernatant, demonstrating a decrease in the inhibition of rootelongation of the seeds.