eng Oriental Scientific Publishing Company Biosciences Biotechnology Research Asia 0973-1245 2015-08-15 12 2 1471 1480 2622 article S. Sivasubramanian 1 S. Karthick Raja Namasivayam 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Bio and Chemical Engineering, Sathyabama University, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India. Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Bio and Chemical Engineering, Sathyabama University, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India. In this work phenol degradation was carried out using Effective Microorganism-1(EM-1) under optimized medium condition. The optimization of medium components was carried out by Plackett–Burman Design (PBD) and Central Composite Design (CCD).Screening of medium component by PB showed that initial phenol concentration(p=0.002), FeCl₃(p= 0.002), MnSO₄ H₂O(p=0.001), MgSO₄.7H₂O (p=0.009) and KH₂PO₄   (p=0.004) had a significant effect on phenol degradation. The optimum of 96.8 % phenol degradation was observed at initial phenol concentration 1000 mg/l, FeCl₃-1.5 mg/l, MnSO₄ H₂O-100mg/l,MgSO₄.7H₂O-100mg/ land KH₂PO₄-250mg/l.Second order polynomial regression analysis was carried out to study the interaction effects of medium composition. The R²==.9819 AdjR²= 0.99 and Pre R²= 0.981 suggested that experimental values are in good agreement with predicted values. https://www.biotech-asia.org/vol12no2/optimization-of-medium-components-for-phenol-degradation-by-em-1/ RSM; Plackett–Burman Design; Central Composite Design; Phenol degradation; Medium optimization