Alireza Chackoshian Khorasani, Mansour Mashreghi, Soheila Yaghmaei,
Volume 6, Issue 4 (3-2014)
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Optimization of mazut biocracking with different variables is one of the bioengineering applications in petroleum industry. The purpose of this study was to optimize biocracking of mazut by native microorganisms. Materials and Methods: To optimize mazut cracking, using Taguchi method we run 32 experiments using seven factors including amount of microbial inoculation, initial pH, surfactant, glucose, phosphor source, nitrogen source and sea salt each of them with four levels and factor of microorganism type with two levels for design of experiment using that 32 experiments were designed by them. Results: Results showed that microbial mixture, 0.016 OD600 microbial inoculations, pH 8.3, Tween80 concentration of 2 g/L, glucose concentration of 4 g/L, phosphate concentration of 5 g/L, ammonium concentration of 9 g/L and sea salt concentration of 0.5 g/L were optimized conditions for biocracking of mazut process. Conclusion: Optimized level for each factor was not essentially inevitably the highest or the lowest level. Based on the analysis of variance, phosphor source with 15.8% and pH with 14.8% had the highest effect among other factors however overally, error factor with 31.6% had the highest influence. Amount of microbial inoculation with 0.63% had the lowest effect on optimizing biocracking of mazut.
