Several studies have reported that high BTEX concentrations may inhibit bioremediation (Munoz et al., 2007; Trigueros et al.,2010); however, inhibition was not observed at the applied BTEX
concentrations (20–120 mgL–1) in this work (Fig. 3i).
This may be attributed to the fact that the BTEX degraders were isolated from petroleum wastewater sludge and enriched in the BTEX solution (Lin et al., 2010).
Further, the immobilization of BTEX degraders in PVA–alginate beads may also protect degraders from BTEX toxicity at high concentrations.