In the twenty first century there is an increasing reliance on fossil fuels. However, the production, transportation, and storage of fossil fuels can generate their own variety of problems. Releases of petroleum, whether anthropogenic or natural, creates threats to all living organisms. Bioremediation is emerging as a promising technology for treating these types of contamination. Bioremediation is using microorganisms to degrade contaminants to render them less hazardous. When dealing with petroleum hydrocarbons, bioremediation tends to be greatly successful. Nonetheless, petroleum contamination in soil is a complicated problem. There are many factors that come into play when trying to treat different contaminated sites. Soil type, regional climate, and types of native microorganisms are relevant factors just to name a few. So, bioremediation is a very multiphasic process, and no location is the same. Because of the advances in technology, bioremediation is becoming a procedure that can be successful applied to clean lots of petroleum contamination.
Composition of Crude Oil
Petroleum hydrocarbons are complex chemicals and are generally considered crude oils. They also include lighter hydrocarbons that may be liquid or gas, like methane, hexane, or propane. This is an important consideration when thinking about bioremediation because the type of chemical compound affects how it can be treated. A hydrocarbon is essentially a chain of carbon and hydrogen molecules. There are 3 types of hydrocarbons in crude oil: Parrafins, Aromatics, Cycloalkanes (Balba 1998). The different hydrocarbons have different properties that effect how they can be treated.
Paraffins or alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons. This means that for every carbon th...
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...ed to each polluted site. Each waste has unique characteristics, therefore has distinctive requirements. Also, in some cases microbes produce more toxic compounds then the initial contamination. This is why bioremdiation has its limitations and isn’t the fix all for all contamination.
Petroleum hydrocarbons have always been naturally deposited in the environment. Therefore, there are huge varieties of beneficial bacteria that can remedy the contamination. The focus of successful remediation relies on providing nourishing environments for the bacteria. When certain variables are controlled, full degradation of hydrocarbons can be achieved. However, in real life situations, the contamination sites are usually less than optimal for the bacteria. With time, more petroleum degrading bacteria will be discovered, and successful remediation will be simpler to accomplish.
Pattanayek, Mala and DeShields, Bridgette. “Characterizing Risks to Livestock From Petroleum Hydrocarbons” Blasland, Bouck and Lee, Inc. University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, 2003. Web. 10 December 2015.
Oil provides us with many necessities in our lives. Cosmetics, medicines, cleaning products, asphalt, food, plastic, and most importantly, petroleum. But of course, nothing comes without a price. The oil that makes our lives so much more convenient, is also ironically gradually killing the environment, this very Earth that we live in. One of the biggest environmental concerns come from oil spills. Oil spill is defined as “ the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution.” Let’s look at some examples of these oil spills.
In 2010, there was a huge oil spill near the Gulf of Mexico that we now know as the BP Oil Spill today. The Spill sent about 170 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill killed 11 men aboard the deep-water Horizon. The BP Oil Spill impacted the environment very negatively. There were different types of environmental impact as a result of the Oil Spill, but the two that grabbed my attention the most are the Polluted Air and the Contaminated Food Chain. The first impact that grabbed my attention was the Polluted Air. Because of the Oil Spill, the air around the surroundings neighborhoods was polluted. All the lightest chemicals in the oil that had spill evaporated within hours of the incidence forming air pollution particles. These particles that are in the air poses significant threats to the human health from being inhaled. The chemical found in the particles that was formed is known as Volatile, which has been known to cause respiratory irritation and central nervous system depression (Solomon & Janssen, 2010). The second impact that grabbed my attention was the contamination of the food chain, specifically the food chain of sea animals that lives near the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists found traces of oil in zooplanktons; this could only mean that the sea creature has had contact with the spilled oil. According to the Staff at Houston Business Journal (2012), “Baby fish and shrimp feed on the tiny, drifting zooplankton, and then introduce contamination and pollution to the larger sea creatures in the food web.” With these findings, it isn’t going to take long before the baby fishes become grown and caught by fishermen and before we know it, it’s on our dinner plate. And here we are eating fishes w...
Besides the accidental spillage affecting severe damage to the environment and then causing harm to humans, there are direct impacts on human health from oil. Problems suc...
Bioremediation has basically no effect afterward on the earth material. When the hazardous material is gone, so are the organisms. The microorganisms won’t survive after all the contaminate is broken down, just like a snail in a fish tank without algae. This makes it so there aren't any negative side effects to the treatment. A big plus to bioremediation is the cost. Bioremediation is only $200 - 400 thousand, an easily payable plan when compared to some of the others. Even with these big pros, there is still some negatives to
Due to having different boiling points the substances in the crude oil can be separated if/by using fractional distillation. The crude oil is braked down and its steam condenses at different temperatures in the fractionating column. Every fraction contains hydrocarbon molecules with very similar numbers of carbon atoms.
The Gulf of Mexico contains commercially important aquatic life, including blue crabs, squid, shrimp, and fish. Toxins in the oil can kill these species or cause injuries such as genetic damage, disease, cancer, and reproductive and immune system impairment. Marine mammals, fish, reptiles, and birds depend on clean, healthy habitats to provide food, shelter, and breeding grounds. The presence of discharged oil in the environment can cause decreased habitat use in the area, altered migration patterns, altered food availability, and disrupted life cycles. Plants affected by the oil could die, eliminating the roots that help bind and stabilize the soil in the ocean floor, leading to erosi...
Nelson, A.N. 1971. Effects of oil on marine plants and animals. London: Institute of Petroleum.
There are many different ways to clean an oil spill, because no two oil spills are the same, they vary in location, oil types, and other conditions involved. Depending on the spill, the best method is to leave the oil alone and let it break down by natural means. (University of Delaware, 2004) But, although by far the cheapest method, it cannot be used for large oil spills, such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico. Another way is to use dispersants to break up the oil, this will speed up the oil’s natural biodergration, (University of Delaware, 2004), and dispersants are used by reducing the surface tension to stop oil and water from mixing.
On the off chance that the oil is acquainted with groundwater, then the groundwater will turn out to be somewhat sullied, however since oil and water don 't blend, it won 't be as terrible
A problem that comes from the extraction of oil is that the outcome of vast quantity of non-renewable water. 1.8 billion litres of toxic water is produced each day by Alberta’s oil sands (Bone, 2014). The extraction of bitumen that is extracted from Alberta’s oil sands, requires large amounts of water and heat to separate the oil from the bitumen; this process is produces huge amounts of toxic waste, which cannot be released back into the local rivers and lakes, and therefore is drained into huge tailing ponds and ultimately be stored there for an indefinite time (Bone, 2014). The companies has to increase the size of existing tailing ponds or create new ones to make room to store the large amounts of toxic waters. Leakage from these ponds has a negative effect on the environment (ex. Landscape. Groundwater, surface water, rivers, etc). Although Alberta leads in the oil industry in Canada, it also leads in the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Furthermore, drilling for oil through open-pit mining disfigures the industrial landscape, taking a toll on the organisms that once lived there. Another factor is the imbalance of PH levels in the soils, which affect plants and microorganisms. Near the Alberta oil sand operational area, there are high concentrations of contaminates from the oil sands. Based on research investigation, there is increasing evidence that “there have been significant environmental
1) The oil contamination of the terrestrial ecosystems has reached levels on an unthinkable scale in the history of the planet. The impacts of war on the environment will take decades to partially disappear and their full effects may never be fully understood. These systems are currently undergoing some natural recovery, but human help is needed in order to restore the environment to pre-war days.. Remediation of the desert is essential to fix the contamination of Kuwait's fresh groundwater reserve and avoid long-term continuing contamination of fresh and brackish groundwater. The oil has continuously seeped into the ground over the years. The amount of contaminated soil that will require treatment increases each day, and will soon reach 50 million m3.
One particular article mentions that there are two types of spills: shore-bound surface spills and the deep-ocean oil spills. Surface oil spills are more detrimental to the health of species that occupy that space, such as seabirds. In addition, organisms within shallow waters are affected by the oil spills. These include salt-marshes and mangroves (Peterson et. al 2012). Oil itself is conventional or unconventional depending on the quality of the oil. Conventional oil is light and flows underground from reservoirs easily. Unconventional oil is heavy and thick, making it less desirable for use (Hirsch et. al 2005).
Oil spills can harm the wildlife, and even the people too. Most of the time, terrorist attacks and equipment malfunctions are the cause of oil spills. Leaks stretch for miles, covering a large amount of water, as well as washing up on shores, making it a threat to several species. These spills can contaminate bodies of water and smother cold-blooded animals, causing them to die from lack of control over their body temperatures. In the article, “Oil Spill Remediation Efforts In The Middle East,” “Such a large amount of oil spread over such a large area poses a serious environmental hazard to air, land, and ground water resources as well as to humans” (Kostreba). Leilani Kostreba explains how spills can be destructive and hazardous to the Earth, suffocating wildlife, as well as polluting the atmosphere. Crude oil is having a negative impact on the environment, disrupting the earth, and harming
Traditional methods for cleaning up contaminated sites such as dig and haul, pump and treat, soil venting, air sparging and others are generally harmful to habitats. Some methods strip the soil of vital nutrients and microorganisms, so nothing can grow on the site, even if it has been decontaminated. Typically these mechanical methods are also very expensive. Most of the remediation technologies that are currently in use are very expensive, relatively inefficient and generate a lot of waste, to be disposed of.