Oil Spills Cleanup

By Author: joycesaraah
Total Articles: 2
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What is Bioremediation?.....it would be the use of living organisms to clean up the environment.

The U.S. creates three hundred million metric tons of biohazardous waste each year from households and industry: the chemical industry single-handedly generates approximately 5 million tons of waste and at least 50% of these are released into the environment.

Numerous organic contaminants are carcinogenic, break down very slowly, and have a tendency to accumulate in the environment posing considerable health risks to human and other living organisms. Bioremediation involves the utilization of plants (phytoremediation) and microorganisms to attend to contaminated soil and water in an environmentally friendly approach. This short article will focus on the use of microorganisms to take care of contaminated locations.

Microorganisms are used in a variety of methods to decontaminate polluted sites and stimulate the environment. Microbial remediation involves natural attenuation, biostimulation and/or bioaugmentation. All three processes rely on the ability of microorganisms to break down the complex molecules of chemicals ...
... in biohazardous waste and use these simpler molecules to build cell parts; thereby, maintaining their very own metabolic processes.

Natural attenuation (intrinsic or natural bioremediation) relates to the process that occurs naturally in contaminated soil or water, as petroleum, gas and oil are countermined by oil-degrading microorganisms local to the soils at contamination areas. An example could be the natural process that happens at old gas stations with leaky underground tanks: oil-degrading microorganisms found in the soil will eventually break down the contaminants. However, researchers are investigating methods to broaden the scope of contaminants that microorganisms could digest, kind of like teaching bacteria to eat new things, and perhaps even speed up the process.

Biostimulation involves the adding together of nutrients and oxygen to contaminated water or soil to promote bacterial growth and activity. Biostimulation was used following the grounding of the Exxon Valdez when fertilizer applications were introduced to the contamination site to stimulate growth of indigenous oil-degrading microorganisms.

Natural attenuation and biostimulation both rely on the natural presence of microorganisms that can degrade the particular contaminant. For instance, following the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the expansion of naturally occurring oil-degrading bacteria was promoted so microbial degradation of the oil would occur quicker.

Whereas natural attenuation and biostimulation rely on indigenous microorganisms, bioaugmentation is used at sites where chemical-specific degrading microorganisms are usually not found. Bioaugmentation involves adding particular microorganisms to contaminated soil or water at the contamination site or in a treatment facility (e.g. municipal wastewater treatment facility). Indigenous microorganisms, with a “taste” for that type of contaminant, are isolated from other contamination sites of the same “flavour”, and added to the contaminated soil or water.

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