Co-metabolic and biochar-promoted biodegradation of mixed PAHs by highly efficient microbial consortium QY1

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), typical representatives of the persistent organic pollutants (POPs), have become ubiquitous in the environment. In this study, a novel microbial consortium QY1 that performed outstanding PAHs-degrading capacity has been enriched. The degradation characteristics of single and mixed PAHs treated with QY1 were studied, and the effect of biochar on biodegradation of mixed PAHs and the potential of biochar in PAHs-heavy metal combined pollution bioremediation were also investigated. Results showed that, in single substrate system, QY1 degraded 94.5% of 500 mg/L phenanthrene (PHE) and 17.8% of 10 mg/L pyrene (PYR) after 7 days, while in PHE-PYR mixture system, the biodegradation efficiencies of PHE (500 mg/L) and PYR (10 mg/L) reached 94.0% and 96.2%, respectively, since PHE served as co-metabolic substrate to have significantly improved PYR biodegradation. Notably, with the cooperation of biochar, the biodegradations of PHE and PYR were greatly accelerated. Further, biochar could reduce the adverse impact of heavy metals (Cd²⁺, Cu²⁺, Cr₂O₇^2-) on PYR biodegradation remarkably. The sequencing analysis revealed that Methylobacterium, Burkholderia and Stenotrophomonas were the dominant genera of QY1 in almost all treatments, indicating that these genera might play key roles in PAHs biodegradation. Overall, this study provided new insights into the efficient bioremediation of PAHs-contaminated site.