5. Commercial Surfactants for Remediation-Introduction

Arenicola marina is an organism whose habitat is spread most of Europe and northeastern America. The gut of this organism is the mixture of surfactants, proteins, enzymes and other unidentified organic materials which plays an important role in the oxidation and recycling of sediment organic matter. Different types of surfactants such as Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), Sodium taurocholate (NaTC), Hexadecyltrimethylammonium (HDTMA), Triton X 100 (TX 100), and Synthesized N-glycino 2,6-dimethylheptanamide has been used for this research to find out the possibility of surfactants for enhancing the release of metals from estuarine sediment while the other is to examine surfactants as a surrogate of gut fluid of invertebrates to determine their metal bioavailability. It is the largest estuary which empties into Plymouth Sound (Grabemann et al. 1997). The contaminated sediment has been collected from the Tamar estuary because it is contaminated by numerous point and non-point sources of discharge. The sediment of this estuary is contaminated by different metals.