Abstract
Yarrowia lipolytica is a fungus that degrades hydrophobic substrates very efficiently. Due to its ability, Yarrowia lipolytica strains have been focus of bioremediation studies, being used as promising agent for treatment of contaminated areas. Bioremediation is an easy method to apply and substantially viable, amoung several spill control techniques. This technique involves the acceleration of natural biodegradation in contaminated environments through increasing nutrients availability and improving environmental conditions by biostimulation, and microorganism addition by bioaugmentation. In the present work, the potential degradation of Yarrowia lipolytica IMUFRJ 50682 is evaluated. A 23 full factorial design was used to investigate some variables influence (agitation, temperature and C:N ratio) on crude oil biodegradation and biomass production was used as dependent variable in experimental design. Additionally, analysis of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was made to investigate the groups of organic compounds present in crude oil can be assimilated by this strain. According to results, it’s possible to observe that agitation speed showed the highest significant effect on dependent variable, followed by C:N ratio. Agitation speed presented positive effect and C:N ratio presented negative effect. Temperature did not show statistically significant effect on biomass production. Analyzing results of GC-MS fingerprints, Y. lipolytica proved to be a microorganism with potential application for bioremediation process, being capable to consume approximately 90% of n-alkanes, 97% of naphthalenes and even 95% of phenanthrenes.
