Studies on Degradation of Chlorobenzene by Immobilized Crude Extract of Nocardia hydrocarbonoxydans

In this work Nocardia hydrocarbonoxydans has been identified as potential organism to decompose chlorobenzene by its crude extract through immobilization technique. Nocardia hydrocarbonoxydans was grown on chlorobenzene as a sole source of carbon and energy. Chlorobenzene was used as an inducer to develop specific intracellular enzymes which will decompose chlorobenzene to nontoxic substance. Crude extracts of the cell contain intracellular enzyme, which were immobilized on sodium alginate beads. The beads were mixed with different concentrations (200, 250, 300 ppm) of chlorobenzene to study the kinetics of degradation of chlorobenzene. The rate of decomposition of chlorobenzene by immobilized crude extracts was measured at different time intervals and it was found that 86 to 96 percent of chlorobenzene can be decomposed in less than ten minutes. The immobilized crude extracts were reused for all other experiments and found that immobilization technique can be used for higher capacity conversion for scale up process.