Aerobic Biodegradability Of Methyl Tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE)

Oxygenates, mainly methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), are commonly added to gasoline to enhance octane index and improve combustion efficiency. As a result of its wide use, MTBE has been detected, mainly in the USA, in groundwater and surface waters, and is a cause of concern because of its possible health effects and other undesirable consequences. MTBE is a water-soluble and mobile compound that generates long pollution plumes in aquifers impacted by gasoline releases from leaking tanks. Field observations concur in estimating that, because of recalcitrance to biodegradation, natural attenuation is slow (half-life of at least 2 years). However, quite significant advances have been made in recent years concerning the microbiology of the degradation of MTBE. MTBE was considered as material that cause cancer and restrict the concentration of 5μg/L in drink water by EPA. The main object of this paper is to do a research of the availability of the aerobic biodegradability of Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE) and bioremediation of the MTBE contaminated groundwater.With batch reaction, this paper studied the feasibility of the aerobic biodegradability and co-metabolism of Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE). Firstly, this work studied the microorganism from the contaminated area of Dagang, and cultivated in enrichment, domestication and screening. And got the dominating microorganism with the best biodegradable effect. Studied the influence of the biodegradable effect by resolved oxygen, pH, temperature, inoculum and substrate's concentration. With the batch reaction above, there are about 30 percent MTBE was degraded. And the identification and characterization of the dominating microorganism was carried out both in physiological-biochemical and molecular biology characteristic.In the study of the co-metabolism, the Pentane and Hexane, which are the highest content in gasoline, were chosen to be the first substrates. The result indicated that about 80 percent and 60 percent of MTBE was degraded respectively. The co-metabolism received a good outcome. And at the end, a fitted model was studied with the process of aerobic biodegradability. The fitting result was coincided with the experimental result.