CHEMICAL ENGINEERINGTRANSACTIONS VOL. 43, 2015 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Chief Editors:SauroPierucci, JiříJ. Klemeš Copyright © 2015, AIDIC ServiziS.r.l., I SBN 978-88-95608-34-1; I SSN 2283-9216 Detection of Parameters Enhancing the Performance of White-Rot Fungi for Degradation of Poly-Aromatic Hydrocarbons Through Design-of-Experiment Methodologies Giuliano Saiu* a , Francesca Poggi b , Stefania Tronci a , Massimiliano Grosso a , Antonio Lallai a , Enzo Cadoni c , Nicoletta Curreli b a Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Chimica e dei Materiali, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Via Marengo 2, 09123 Cagliari b Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, Unità di Biochimica, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cittadella Universitaria, 09042 Monserrato,Cagliari c Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Geologiche, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cittadella Universitaria, 09042 Monserrato, Cagliari g.saiu@dimcm.unica.it The aim of this work is to evaluate the tolerance and the growth capabilities of a white rot fungus, the Pleurotus-Sajor Caju, when exposed to Poly-Aromatic Hydrocarbons. The research was carried out by using in vitro systems developed on Petri dishes, where microbial strains are exposed to chemical pollutants, in particular pyrene and chrysene along with addition of surfactants, peptone, copper sulphate and lecithin that may promote fungal growth and tolerance. It was found that the fungal population growth is strongly inhibited by chrysene presence. On the other hand the pyrene has a mild negative impact on the micelyal growth, which seems to be positively influenced by the presence of Tween 80 and copper sulphate. 1. Introduction The need for new regulations on environmental remediation of polluted sites has produced an increase of decontamination operations for soils, groundwater and sediments. The recovery processes are often directed to remove organic contaminants that are toxic and barely biodegradable. Among the several contaminants present in the environment, Poly-Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are considered priority pollutants because they are one of the most ubiquitous class, and most of them are mutagenic and carcinogenic. Biological treatments applied to organic compounds removal showed to be attractive, mainly because they are not expensive and fulfil the most important properties required by the current regulations (Martins et al, 2012). The main obstacles for an efficient biodegradation of PAHs are their low bioavailability and recalcitrance (Leonardi et al., 2007). Among the different microbial consortia proposed in literature to be applied for bioremediation, white rot fungi have recently captured the interest of several researchers because of their ability to degrade an extremely diverse range of very persistent or toxic environmental pollutants. In particular, their degradation ability has been assessed under laboratory conditions for pesticides (Xiao et al., 2011), chlorophenols (Rubilar et al., 2011), synthetic dyes (Zhuo et al., 2011), drugs (Rodarte-Morales, 2012) and PAHs (Wen et al., 2011). The capacity for degrading such complex compounds depends on their ability to produce extracellular enzymes with low substrate specificity, such as lignin peroxidase, laccase, aryl-alchohol-oxidase and manganese peroxidase (Tortella et al., 2013). In the present study, the ability of the white rot fungi Pleurotus sajor-caju to degrade PAHs has been investigated, focusing the research on its tolerance when exposed to pyrene and chrysene. The impact of different parameters affecting bioavailability (Tween 80) and promoting the fungal growth (lecithin, peptone and copper sulphate) have been also considered. The experimental campaign has been developed using a DOI: 10.3303/CET1543046 Please cite this article as: Saiu G., Poggi F., Tronci S., Grosso M., Lallai A., Cadoni E., Curreli N., 2015, Detection of parameters enhancing the performance of white-rot fungi for the degradation of poly-aromatic hydrocarbons through design-of-experiment methodologies, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 43, 271-276 DOI: 10.3303/CET1543046 271