Estimation of Potassium Concentration Value for Optimisation of Bioremediation Cocktail Model Design
Potassium was evaluated in the form of plantain peel which was charred and made into powder of similar size. Though, not a major nutrient for bacterial growth but has a role in microbial activities both as an enzyme activator and as the predominant monovalent cation for maintenance of cell turgor ( Kovárová-Kovar & Egli, 1998). Its char form acts as an absorption site for bacterial and substrate interaction in the remediation setup.
Bacterial-substrate growth and variance analysis of the OVAT experimental data for plantain peels estimated potassium substrate of 0.025g for optimal biomass and viable bacterial count of bacterial isolates. The experiment was set up in 100ml of growth media. This value was scaled up to bioremediation setup by a factor of 100
Therefore, a 2.5g of plantain peel char was added to all cocktail formulation used for the bioremediation application.
The plantain peels char was not a variable in the RSM-DX program for optimization.
The concentration of the potassium in the plantain peel char was estimated from the mass spectrophotometry measurement result.
1.0g of plantain peels char was suspended in a 50ml extraction solvent used for the measurement.
Resulting in a value of 176.037ppm (where ppm = mgL -1 and L = 1000ml and is equivalent to 20g of extract plantain peels
Thus, K equivalent = 176.037mg/20g sample of plantain peels char or 8.8mgg -1 plantain peels char.
Therefore, 2.5g × 8.8mgg -1 = 22mg of plantain peels char for kilogram of the sample soil treated in the bioremediation setup