Morphological characteristics of Talaromyces sp., Cladosporium sp. and Penicillium sp. as microfungi in biodegradation of oil sludge using scanning electron microscope (SEM)

Abstract

The microfungi Talaromyces sp., Cladosporium sp. and Penicillium sp. are able to produce biosurfactan and can degrade hydrocarbon compounds in oil sludge waste Oil sludge is one of the hazardous waste produced by the petroleum industry and categorized as hazardous and toxic waste category 1, which means it could be acute for human being and the environment. The present study aims to demonstrate the differences in morphological characteristic of Talaromyces sp., Cladosporium sp. and Penicillium sp. in the medium containing/and without oil sludge as biodegrader of oil sludge. In this study, descriptive method was conducted to characterize the three of microfungal species morphologically with three stages: preparation, culture and morphological characterization of fungal hyphae with Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in two types of medium (with and without oil sludge). The SEM observations demonstrate changes in hypha morphology for the medium containing oil sludge treatment. Aggregation and changes in the structure of hyphae occurred. This changes covers the number of branches, shrinkage of size and cell walls, as well as cell lysis. The present work showed that the presence of oil sludge can change the morphological characteristics of microfungi compared to control, indicating the adaptation ability of these three microfungal species in degrading oil sludge waste.