Optimization of Microbial Consortium Formulation for Oily Food Waste Composting Using Mixture Design Methodology

Area of Science:

• Environmental Microbiology
• Biotechnology
• Waste Management

Background:

• Efficient microbial consortia are crucial for aerobic composting, particularly for degrading oil in food waste (FW).
• Challenges exist in formulating effective microbial consortia due to a lack of suitable oil-degrading microorganisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To isolate and compound effective oil-degrading microorganisms for food waste composting.
• To optimize microbial consortia formulation using a simplex-lattice mixture design.

Main Methods:

• Isolation of oil-degrading bacteria and fungi.
• Application of simplex-lattice mixture design for microbial compounding.
• Development and validation of cubic response models using analysis of variance.
• Optimization of microbial blend proportions for oil degradation.

Main Results:

• Three validated cubic response models with high R-squared values (96.06%-97.18%) were developed.
• Optimal proportions for a microbial blend were determined: 11.83% *Agrobacterium tumefaciens*, 8.10% *Pseudomonas geniculata*, 10.97% *Luteibacter rhizovicinus*, 20.9% *Simplicillium cylindrosporum*, 22.3% *Fusarium proliferatum*, and 25.9% *Simplicillium lanosoniveum*.
• Composting verification showed a 31.3% higher oil degradation efficiency with the optimized composite microbial agent compared to the control.

Conclusions:

• The optimized microbial consortium demonstrates significant potential for enhancing oil degradation in food waste composting.
• This research provides a valuable framework for compounding microbial agents and promoting resource utilization of rural food waste.