Co-metabolic bioremediation is supposed to be an impressive and promising approach in the elimination technology of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), which was found to be a common pollutant worldwide in the ground or underground water in recent years. In this paper, bacterial strain DZ13 (which can co-metabolically degrade MTBE) was isolated and named as Pseudomonas sp. DZ13 based on the result of 16S rRNA gene sequencing analysis. Strain DZ13 could grow on n-alkanes (C₅-C₈), accompanied with the co-metabolic degradation of MTBE. Diverse n-alkanes with different carbon number showed a significant influence on the degradation rate of MTBE and accumulation of tert-butyl alcohol (TBA). When Pseudomonas sp. DZ13 co-metabolically degraded MTBE with n-pentane as the growth substrate, a higher MTBE-degrading rate (Vmax = 38.1 nmol/min/mgprotein, Ks = 6.8 mmol/L) and lower TBA-accumulation was observed. In the continuous degradation experiment, the removal efficiency of MTBE by Pseudomonas sp. Strain DZ13 did not show an obvious decrease after five times of continuous addition.
Keywords: MTBE; Pseudomonas sp.; alkane; co-metabolic degradation.