Used Palm Cooking Oil as Substrate for Optimization of Lipase Activity in Aeromonas caviae SS-2

Palm oil is widely used for culinary applications, industrial formulations, and oleochemical processing. The increasing demand for palm oil for household and industrial use indirectly contributes to environmental pollution, particularly through the unethical disposal of palm oil waste. In this study, a sustainable biotechnological approach is explored to utilize this waste by exploiting the catalytic potential of bacterial lipases. Lipase-producing bacteria have been isolated from used palm oil-contaminated environments in Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, using the stab agar screening method. Among 90 potential isolates, Aeromonas caviae SS-2 demonstrates the highest lipase specific activity at 9.189 µmol/mL/min within just 9 hours of incubation at 40℃. A. caviae SS-2 indicates an optimum lipase production when it is cultivated in Tryptone Azolectin Tween (TAT) broth supplemented with 1% (v/v) of Tween 40 and 2% (v/v) of used palm oil. This enzymatic biotransformation efficiently hydrolyzed long-chain triglycerides into shorter, value-added carbon chains, demonstrating its potential for lipid production and industrial bio-conversion.