ABSTRACT
Crude oil contamination is a growing environmental problem world wide, and field-based remediation approach is nowadays extensively used globally to tackle oil spills contamination at a larger scale. After the gulf war in 1990, crude oil-contaminated dry and wet oil lakes are still lying in the large desert area of Kuwait. Since crude oil is a complex mixture of an indefinite number of individual chemical compounds,the properties of these compounds differ depending on many factors such as source, geological history, age, migration and alteration of crude oil. The major remediation technology is in cineration, thermal desorption, chemical treatment, and bioremediation. Microorganisms either catabolize petroleum hydrocarbon available incrude oil to obtain carbon sources and energy or assimilate them into cell biomass for growthand proliferation. In aerobic route of degradation, the process is carried out within the cytoplasmic membrane, and theoxidation product is transported inside the cell where potential degrading bacteria oxidize the carbon molecules through oxygenase/dehydrogen a seenzyme complex and produce oxygen molecules, resulting in the formation of alcohol that is more reactive. Subsequently, alcohol groupis transformed to carboxylic acid through oxidation of aldehyde, which is similar to fatty acid and decomposed into an acetyl Co-A by beta-oxidation and bywhich fatty acid is shortened to two carbon atom compounds. Other oxidation pathways are terminal oxidation and subterminal oxidation. In both the terminal oxidation pathways, oxidation of both ends of the alkane molecule takes place through w-hydroxylation where terminal methyl group of fatty acidis converted into dicarboxylic acid by βoxidation.
