REVIEWBiodegradation of Crude Oil Contaminating Marine Shorelines and Freshwater Wetlands☆
Section snippets
Biodegradation as a Weathering Process
Biodegradation of oil is one of the most important processes involved in weathering and the eventual removal of petroleum from the environment, particularly for the non-volatile components of petroleum. Numerous scientific review articles have covered various aspects of this process and the environmental factors that influence the rate of biodegradation (Zobell, 1946, Zobell, 1973; Atlas, 1981, Atlas, 1984; NAS, 1985; Foght & Westlake, 1987; Leahy & Colwell, 1990).
Mesocosm studies
Mesocosms or pilot-scale systems can help to simulate actual conditions at relatively low cost, and are frequently used as bridges between microcosms and field systems. Mesocosms have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of numerous bioremediation strategies.
Bioaugmentation
Unlike results from bench-scale tests, numerous mesocosm studies have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of bioaugmentation treatments. For example, Tagger et al. (1983) overlaid two mesocosms with crude oil. One was inoculated with an
Nutrient Transport in Beaches: Field Trials
In attempts to determine persistence of nutrients in high-energy and low-energy beaches, tracer studies were conducted in the intertidal zone of three different marine beaches in Delaware and Maine (Suidan & Wrenn, 2001; Wrenn et al., 1997a, Wrenn et al., 1997b).
Conclusions
The focus of this paper was to review biodegradation as a weathering process affecting the persistence of oil stranded on shorelines. Clearly, biodegradation is a key weathering process on coastal shorelines. The most important factors affecting biological removal of hydrocarbons are the presence of oxygen and sufficient nutrients in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus to support the biodegradation process. Maintenance of high concentrations of nutrients is the primary engineering challenge.
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2022, Journal of Environmental ManagementCitation Excerpt :The limited success of passive methods explored to date, that remove between 50 and 80% with retention times of 7–10 days (Dhaouefi et al., 2018; Yaseen and Scholz, 2018) may partly be due to the lack of anaerobic stage. Biogeochemical cycling has been recognised in the degradation of recalcitrant contaminants in wetland systems (e.g. (Han et al., 2020)) and implicated in the biodegradation of organic contaminants including BTEX, nitroaromatics, and dyes (Oon et al., 2018; Teramoto and Chang, 2019; Venosa and Zhu, 2003; Vymazal, 2007, 2013; Yadav et al., 2012). Iron oxides have been shown to have an important role in biodegradation of azo dyes promoting sulphate reducing bacteria, iron-reducing bacteria, and/or other microbes (Albuquerque et al., 2005; Li et al., 2017; Yu et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2012).
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Part of this paper is a summary of the EPA Technical Report entitled “Guidelines for the Bioremediation of Marine Shorelines and Freshwater Wetlands,” Zhu et al. (2002), which can be downloaded from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Web site: http://epa.gov/oilspill/docs/bioremed.pdf.
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