Development of predictive model for rate of degradation in crude oil polluted areas

Environmental nuisance of pollution created by crude oil spillage had constituted great challenges to environmental experts. Notable efforts had been made to reduce the incessant pollution of the environment by crude oil. The modeling of the rate at which this crude oil waste undergoes degradation is very needful as it will help to curb the menace. In this work, twenty four experimental results were analyzed to determine the effect of crude oil concentration on bacterial growth. This is a factor considered as being responsible for the rate of degradation in crude oil polluted areas. Diverse nutrients were added in the 24 experiments at the concentrations of 0.00gL-1, 125gL-1, 167gL-1, 417gL-1 and 520gL-1. Corresponding value of 25g, 50g, 75g and 100g were added as nutrients. The biomass numbers were determined weekly for a duration of six weeks. With this, a predictive model was developed to determine the number of bacteria. Bacteria are considered as being responsible for the rate of degradation of crude oil polluted areas. This prediction was found to be successful to an accuracy index of 98.5%.