Efficiency of Pluerotus ostreatus in Bioremoval of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon from Refinery Effluent

Refinery effluent requires treatment to reduce residual hydrocarbons before discharging into the environment, due to their toxicity. This study was conducted to investigate the efficiency of Pluerotus ostreatus to bioremove Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH) in effluent discharged from the Port Harcourt refinery. Effluent treatment for TPH removal was conducted in the laboratory with Pluerotus ostreatus, sawdust and rice bran amendments. Five treatment options were used: Raw sample (Treatment A), which served as the positive control to monitor natural attenuation; filtered sample (Treatment B), which served as the negative control; effluent seeded with spawn and rice bran (Treatment C); effluent seeded with spawn and sawdust (Treatment D) and effluent seeded with spawn, sawdust and rice bran (Treatment E). Treatment E was efficient in removing 95.29% of TPH. Treatment B was least efficient in TPH removal with 10.10% reduction. The one-way analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that there was no significant difference between the treatments C, D and E at 5% (p<0.05) level of significance. However, a Post Hoc analysis revealed that there exist significant differences between treatments A, B, C, D and E in the reduction of the concentration of TPH in the effluent samples. Pleurotus ostreatus indeed has bioadsorbent potential that can be exploited in the treatment of environments polluted with effluent containing significant levels of TPH.