Hydrocarbon Degradation of Oil Pipeline Blockage by Thermophilic Fungi Isolated from Tawke Field

Recently major challenges facing oil industrials due to blockage of oil pipelines. Bioremediation technique was used for clearing the blockage of oil pipelines. Soil samples contaminated with Crude oil was collected from Tawke field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Different strains of fungus were isolated from soil and estimated their hydrocarbon degradation efficacy. The fungal efficient for oil degradation was characterized by study their morphology and estimate their substrate utilization. The effect of following parameters such as Temperature, pH, the concentration of oil and NaCl on the efficiency of fungus was studied. The result found that Penicillium expansum has ability to degrade the crude oil at 10% concentration associated with 0.5% NaCl under microaerophilic environment in one week at 55 °C at pH 7. The activity of biodegradation was confirmed by using Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC). It is one of the major advantage using Penicillium expansum in large scale production as these strains considered thermophilic strains which have merit over using Mesophilic strain due to less cost for cooling during production and minimize the contamination.