Abstract
Biodegradabilities of anionic surfactants listed in Table-1 were investigated under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Under anaerobic condition where the removal of organic substances took place slowly and incompletely, even surfactant sulfonates with straight alkyl chain were found to show low biodegradabilities. Among sulfates tested, there were some which proved ramarkable decrease in the methylene blue (MB) responsibility by anaerobic incubation. It was found by use of a sulfate, DAS, that the organic biodegradation intermediate was present in anaerobically incubated medium after the disappearance of MB-responce and that the amount of organic biodegradation residue found in earlier stage of aerobic incubation was much as compared with the estimate from the disappearance rate of the MB-responce. Therefore, enzymatic hydrolysis seemed to take part in the biodegradation process bisides the breakdown of its alkyl chain.
