Isolation and characterization in a soil conditioned with foaming agents of a bacteria consortium able to degrade sodium lauryl ether sulphate

bioaugmentation techniques. Enrichment cultures were performed using bacterial populations from spoil material collected in a tunnel construction site as the inoculum. A microbial pool able to grow in a few hours with SLES concentrations from 125 mg/L to 2 g/L was selected and then identified by NGS analysis. Most of the bacteria identified (99%) belonged to Gamma-Proteobacteria with Pseudomonas (ca 90%) the predominant genus. The microbial pool was able to completely degrade an initial SLES concentration of 250 mg/L in 9 hours. A predictive functional analysis using the PICRUSt2 software showed the presence of esterase enzymes, responsible for SLES degradation. The microbial pool selected could be useful for its possible seeding (bioaugmentation) on spoil material from tunneling excavation.