Kaan Poyraz
Civil Engineering – Environmental Engineering
Bioremediation
 Bioremediation can be defined as any process that
uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their
enzymes to return the natural environment altered by
contaminants to its original condition.
Bioremediation
 Cleanup of oil spills by the addition of nitrate and/or
sulfate fertilizers to facilitate the decomposition of
crude oil by indigenous or exogenous bacteria.
 To attack specific soil contaminants, such as
degradation of chlorinated hydrocarbons by bacteria.
Overview and applications
 Naturally occurring bioremediation and
phytoremediation have been used for centuries
(desalination of agricultural land by phytoextraction).
 Bioremediation technology using microorganisms was
reportedly invented by George M. Robinson. He was
the assistant county petroleum engineer for Santa
Maria, California. During the 1960s, he spent his spare
time experimenting with dirty jars and various mixes
of microbes.
Overview and applications
 Bioremediation technologies can be generally
classified as in situ or ex situ.
 In situ bioremediation involves treating the
contaminated material at the site while ex situ involves
the removal of the contaminated material to be
treated elsewhere.
 Some examples of bioremediation technologies are
bioventing, landfarming, bioreactor, composting,
bioaugmentation, rhizofiltration, and biostimulation.
Overview and applications
 Naturally occurring bioremediation: natural
attenuation or intrinsic bioremediation
 Bioremediation via the addition of fertilizers to
increase the bioavailability within the medium:
biostimulation
 Addition of matched microbe strains to the medium
to enhance the resident microbe population's ability to
break down contaminants: bioaugmentation
Overview and applications
 Heavy metals such as cadmium and lead are not
readily absorbed or captured by organisms. The
assimilation of metals such as mercury into the food
chain may worsen matters.
 Phytoremediation is useful in these situations, because
natural plants or transgenic plants are able to
bioaccumulate these toxins in their above-ground
parts, which are then harvested for removal.
Advantages
 the cost of the phytoremediation is lower than that of
traditional processes both in situ and ex situ
 can be employed in areas that are inaccessible without
excavation
 the plants can be easily monitored
 the possibility of the recovery and re-use of valuable metals
(by companies specializing in “phyto mining”)
 it is potentially “the least harmful” method because it uses
naturally occurring organisms and preserves the environment
in a more natural state
References
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http://www.terranovabiosystems.com/science/remediation-resources.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V24-4DVBJ2S1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchSt
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Meagher, RB (2000). "Phytoremediation of toxic elemental and organic pollutants".
Current Opinion in Plant Biology 3 (2): 153–162. doi:10.1016/S1369-5266(99)00054-0.
PMID 10712958.
Diaz E (editor). (2008). Microbial Biodegradation: Genomics and Molecular Biology
(1st ed.). Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-17-2.
http://www.horizonpress.com/biod.
Lovley, DR (2003). "Cleaning up with genomics: applying molecular biology to
bioremediation". Nature Reviews. Microbiology. 1 (1): 35 – 44. doi:10.1038/nrmicro731.
PMID 15040178.
Brim H, McFarlan SC, Fredrickson JK, Minton KW, Zhai M, Wackett LP, Daly MJ
(2000). "Engineering Deinococcus radiodurans for metal remediation in radioactive
mixed waste environments". Nature Biotechnology 18 (1): 85 – 90. doi:10.1038/71986.
PMID 10625398.
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