Biotechnological remediation of creosote treated wood may be of interest in connection with novel recycling processes. White rot fungi and/or their ligninolytic enzyme systems are supposed to be valuable tools for such processes. This paper reports about results achieved when creosoted wood was treated in solid substrate fermentation with selected white rot fungi after different extraction procedures. None of different optimized fermentation conditions enabled the colonization of creosoted wood. The minimal inhibitory concentration for fungi was found to be about one power of ten below the actual concentration in railway sleepers. The efficiency of various solvents to extract creosote below the MIC for fungi was investigated. When 16 PAHs were analysed by HPLC under growth conditions, the best fungal strain degraded 100% of the low molecular weight PAHs and 92% of the 4-5 ring PAHs after 16 days. The lowest reduction was found to be 79% for benzo(b)fluoranthene. The results are discussed with respect to the application of white rot fungi for technical processes in combination with novel recycling methods for creosote treated wood.

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