4. Results and discussion
4.1. Determination of bacterial growth and biodegradation using a single Strain
The ability of an individual strain of bacterium to treat a wastewater was monitored by measuring both the cell
growth and biodegradation of TOC in a synthetic wastewater samples. All the samples (120ml with 220mg/l TOC)
were inoculated with 10ml of active strain and gave initial optical density varying from 0.037-0.056 optical density
(OD600) of bacteria. Samples were withdrawn every 2 hours, and the OD600 and TOC were measured. Fig. 1 and
2 show the growth of bacteria and the residual TOC concentration, respectively. The growth phase patterns (Fig.1)
demonstrate that all the local bacteria took longer time to reach stationary phase compared to the SludgeHammer
bacteria.
To evaluate the performance of each strain in degrading TOC, the growth kinetic parameters were determinedand compared in Table 1.