Bioremediation of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils in cold regions: Development of a pre-optimized biostimulation biopile-scale field assay in Antarctica

MARTINEZ ALVAREZ L; RUBERTO LAM; LOBALBO A; MAC CORMACK W.P

SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2017

0048-9697

Bioremediation proved to be an effective approach to deal with soil contamination, especially in isolated, cold environments such as Antarctica. Biostimulation, involving the addition of macronutrients -mainly nitrogen andphosphorous- is considered the simplest and cheapest bioremediation process. Optimizing the levels of these nutrients is a key step prior to the application of a biostimulation strategy. In this work, N and P levels, optimized byResponse Surface Methodology (RSM) at lab-scale, were applied to an Antarctic hydrocarbon contaminated soil.The process was performed on-site, using high density polyethylene geomembranes (800 μm) to isolate treatedsoil from the surroundings and under environmental conditions at Carlini station (Antarctica) during 50 days.Two 0.5 ton biopiles were used as experimental units; a control biopile (CC), and a biostimulated system (BS),amended with N and P. At the end of the assay, hydrocarbon removal was signi ficantly higher in BS system compared to CC (75.79% and 49.54% respectively), showing that the applied strategy was effective enough to performa field-assay in Antarctica that signi ficantly reduce soil contamination levels; and proving that RSM represents afundamental tool for the optimization of nutrient levels to apply during bioremediation of fuel contaminated coldsoils.