Resumen
Hydrogen sulphide pollution causes industry to invest large amount of money to treat it and, exposure of this pollutant at high concentration may lead to death. To treat sulphide pollutions, sulphur oxidising bacteria (SOB) can be used as it consumes sulphur compounds as main carbon source. In this study, SOB was isolated from MTBE-PETRONAS wastewater and was enriched for 14 days using selective enrichment media supplemented with thiosulphate and elemental sulphur as sole carbon sources. A total of 17 isolates were obtained and were considered as positive SOB as it able to grow in cultivation media. The isolates were purified and characterised based on their morphological features. Only 5 pure isolates were obtained and were named as DZ1, DZ2, DZ3, DZ4 and DZ5. The identification of potential SOB was carried out using universal primer 27F and 1492R. DZ1 was identified from Pseudomonas sp. and DZ2, DZ3, DZ4, and DZ5 from Bacillus sp. The isolates were screened for its capability to oxidise sulphur compounds into sulphate ion and reduce pH of culture. From 5 isolates, DZ1 and DZ2 were efficient potential SOB as it showed increment of sulphate ion and able to reduce pH of cultivation media. Successful isolation of SOB is useful to the industry as it can be used to remediate sulphur pollution in the petrochemical wastewater. The optimization for growth of DZ1 and DZ2 could be done so that they can be used to remediate wastewater at maximum rate.