Enrichment of the fungal consortium was carried out by gradually increasing the amount of phenol as sole carbon source from 100 g l 1 to 1000 g l 1 for more than 1 month in MSM media. The acclimatization stage has been carried out until complete removal of phenol. Once phenol is completely degraded, the cells are centrifuged, washed with buffer solution and distilled water and then grown in MSM with another initial phenol concentration. The phenol degrading stains were isolated based on their phenol degrading ability by enrichment technique. The best phenol degrading strains were selected from the isolates and used in different combination for construction of consortia. Consortium performancewas accessed by measuring microorganism lag phase, specific growth rate (m), yield coefficient (Yx/s) and specific degradation rate. The experimental data on the substrate degradation at various initial concentrations of phenolwas utilized for the calculation of biomass yield and specific degradation rates according to the following Eqs. (1) and (2):
225 C. The mass spectrum of compounds in samples was obtained by electron ionization at 70 eV and the detector was operated in scan mode from 45–450m/z. The total running timewas 28.67 min. Identification was based on the molecular structure, molecular mass and calculated fragments. Interpretation on mass spectrum GC–MS was conducted using the database of NIST, Library. The spectrum of the unknown component was compared with the spectrum of the component stored in the NIST library.