Degradation of fuel oil in salt marsh soils affected by the Prestige oil spill (original) (raw)
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Inventions, 2020
Crude oil is the world’s leading fuel source and is the lifeblood of the industrialized nations as it is vital to produce many everyday essentials. This dependency on fossil fuels has resulted in serious environmental issues in recent times. Petroleum contaminated soils must be treated to ensure that human health and the environment remain protected. The restoration of petroleum-polluted soil is a complex project because once petroleum hydrocarbon enters the environment, the individual constituents will partition to various environmental compartments in accordance with their own physical–chemical properties; therefore, the composition and inherent biodegradability of the petroleum hydrocarbon pollutant determines the suitability of a remediation approach. The objective of this study was to assess the prospective of bioremediation as a feasible technique for practical application to the treatment of petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated soils, by trending the changes in the properties o...
Evidence for in situ crude oil biodegradation after the Prestige oil spill
Environmental microbiology, 2005
In November 2002, the oil tanker Prestige sank off the Spanish coast after releasing approximately 17 000 tones of heavy fuel, coating several hundred kilometres of coastline in oil sludge. In December 2002 and February 2003, samples were collected from the shore of the Galician coast to analyse the indigenous population ability to carry out crude oil degradation in situ. Carbon isotopic ratio of the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in seawater samples was used as a rapid method to directly assess activity of microbes on the oil components. 12CO2/13CO2 ratio in samples from certain locations along the coast revealed degradation of a very δ13C-negative source such as the Prestige crude oil (−30.6‰). Putative biodegradation processes taking place at areas with high income of fresh seawater could not be detected with this technique. Laboratory-scale biostimulation processes carried out in samples with the highest oil biodegradation activity showed that N/P deficiency in seawater is a limiting factor for crude oil degradation. The most probable number (MPN) of crude oil component degraders was estimated for several aromatic compounds (naphthalene, anthracene, phenanthrene, pyrene) and for undecane. Our results clearly show that bacteria present in the contaminated water are readily able to transform components of the crude oil into inorganic carbon.