In situ bioremediation of oily sludge-contaminated soil by biostimulation of indigenous microbes through adding manure was conducted at the Shengli oilfield in northern China. After bioremediation for 360 days, total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) content was reduced by 58.2% in the treated plots compared with only 15.6% in the control plot. Moreover, bioremediation significantly improved the phys...

Persistent free radicals (PFRs) are emerging contaminants of increasing concern, yet their formation, fate, toxicity and health risk poorly known. Thermal treatment, a common remediation technique to clean industrial soils, induces the formation PFRs, which could paradoxically increase soil toxicity, contrary original objective remediation. Actually, there is little knowledge on PFRs in soils c...

Two different procedures were compared to isolate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-utilizing bacteria from PAH-contaminated soil and sludge samples, i.e., (i) shaken enrichment cultures in liquid mineral medium in which PAHs were supplied as crystals and (ii) a new method in which PAH degraders were enriched on and recovered from hydrophobic membranes containing sorbed PAHs. Both technique...

A biosensor for detecting the toxicity of polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) contaminated soil has been successfully constructed using an immobilized recombinant bioluminescent bacterium, GC2 (lac::luxCDABE), which constitutively produces bioluminescence. The biosurfactant, rhamnolipids, was used to extract a model PAH, phenanthrene, and was found to enhance the bioavailability of phenanthr...

[(sup14)C]naphthalene and phenanthrene were oxidized to (sup14)CO(inf2) without a detectable lag under strict anaerobic conditions in sediments from San Diego Bay, San Diego, Calif., that were heavily contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) but not in less contaminated sediments. Sulfate reduction was necessary for PAH oxidation. These results suggest that the self-purificatio...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-contaminated soils are of concern to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) due to their mutagenic and carcinogenic nature. Bioremediation of PAHs is aimed at increasing the overall rate of natural degradation. Microbial bioremediation promotes processes by which microorganisms can take up and/or degrade organic molecules and their metabolites. Microorga...

Biodegradation kinetics of naphthalene, phenanthrene and pyrene were studied in sole-substrate systems, and in binary and ternary mixtures to examine substrate interactions. The experiments were conducted in aerobic batch aqueous systems inoculated with a mixed culture that had been isolated from soils contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Monod kinetic parameters and yield...

Surface soils from Guiyu, China (an intense e-waste processing center) were analyzed for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and variations in composition of the resident bacterial communities. Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis analysis of bacterial 16S rRNA gene showed that e-waste pollution altered the bacterial community structure by promoting changes in species composition and specie...

A pot experiment was performed to study the effectiveness of remediation using different plant species and the enzyme response involved in remediating PAH-contaminated soil. The study indicated that species Echinacea purpurea, Festuca arundinacea Schred, Fire Phoenix (a combined F. arundinacea), and Medicago sativa L. possess the potential for remediation in PAH-contaminated soils. The study al...