Literature was available for biodegradation of phenol using pure and mixed
cultures. But very few reports were available for biological degradation of toxic
phenolic waste wasters using acclimatized cultures. The advantages of acclimatized
culture is that, easy to adapt for different toxic wastes, simplicity of operation and
maintenance. Acclimatized mixed culture has better advantage over pure culture,
where in the substrate has to be sterile and more factors influence/retards its growth
and performance. [12, 15]. Hence, in the present study a comparison of performance
of pure and mixed culture is done for their capacity to degrade phenol