Enhance biodegradation of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) anaerobic/aerobic biological treatment by biosurfactant

Abstract

Pentaerythritoltetranitrate (PETN) is explosive that show more toxic to some microorganisms than other explosives. Some chemical and Structural character of PETN such as very low solubility in water can cause some problem to biological treatments in success. This study was undertaken to evaluate the potential for using anaerobic/aerobic sequences to degrade PETN and the influence of rhamnolipids biosurfactant for PETN biodegradation improvement. The results showed that the anaerobic treatment with rhamnolipid biosurfactant caused an almost 74 transformation of PETN and 30 days aeration of the reactor led to an elimination of most of the remaining PETN (almost 98). in the control experiments without biosurfactant a 24 PETN removal was observed. Rhamnolipids can enhance solubility of PETN and disperse it in aqueous solution and cause homogeneous distribution in soil can cause microbial PETN degradation enhancement and more denitrated metabolites disappearance.