Micro-fungos de interesse para o setor de petróleo, gás e biocombustíveis

• Autor(a) principal: Baron, Noemi Carla [UNESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/118214
• topic: Petróleo; Biodegradação; Tolueno; Biorremediação; Formiga-cortadeira; Biocombustíveis; Gás; Resíduos industriais

Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture of various sizes, including saturated and aromatic compounds. Natural gas is a mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons and its main component is methane. In our society, the great demand for these fuels requires fast extraction, transportation and refining, increasing the number of accidents that compromise the environment. Oil is a finite resource and it is necessary to reduce the problems related to the question concerning environmental pollution which has encouraged the search for alternative fuel sources in our country. So today we have two major biofuels: ethanol and biodiesel. Concurrently, many studies have been done directed toward the isolation of microorganisms capable of degrading petrochemical industrial wastes, most of them using as a source of isolation soil and water collected in a contaminated environment. Isolation from alternative substrates has emerged as a new strategy that has provided satisfactory results. In this work, we present the leaf-cutter ants of the Attini tribe as a source for the isolation of micro-fungi with the potential for hydrocarbon degradation. These insects have a social way of life and a highly specialized system of intra and interspecific communication, which is based on the recognition of individuals through volatile chemical compounds, the majority hydrocarbons, stored in their exoskeleton. The micro-environment exoskeleton of Attini ants (genus Atta) used in this work proved to be a rich source of microbial biodiversity, as other studies have found. The flotation isolation technique applied here allowed the achievement of 214 micro-fungi, 118 representatives of the dematiaceous fungi group and 96 hyaline filamentous fungi. They were submitted to toluene degradation tests and at least one strain of each genus presented good results, namely Teratosphaeria, Exophiala, Cladosporium, Penicillium, Aspergillus... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)