Detoxification impact of Trichosporon cutaneum in saline condition for efficient reduction of phenol co-contaminated with cadmium

Treatment strategies applied for co-contaminated environments may not work due to a mixture of organic and inorganic contaminants. Here, we study the efficiency of simultaneous phenol and cadmium removal by Trichosporon cutaneum in saline condition. Initially, phenol degradation and cadmium removal were analyzed separately. The results showed the high potential of T. cutaneum for phenol degradation and almost all the phenol (1250 mg/L) was degraded in the presence of 5% NaCl. Cadmium removal by T. cutaneum indicated a direct relation to NaCl concentration. Increasing salt concentration from 0 to 5% caused an increase in cadmium adsorption from 57.3 to 80.2%. In the simultaneous remediation of phenol and cadmium, T. cutaneum showed a delay in the growth curve and phenol degradation, probably because of toxicity effect of cadmium, but at the end of a week, almost the same amount of phenol was removed (> 99% in 1250 mg/L phenol). T. cutaneum showed good efficiency in cadmium removal in simultaneous remediation and removed 90, 89, and 75% of cadmium in the existence of 5% NaCl in 750, 1000, and 1250 mg/L initial concentration of phenol, respectively. Our findings support the high activity of T. cutaneum in the bioremediation of polluted saline areas that phenol coexists with cadmium.