Bioremediation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons in Seawater: Oil Spill Plume Modelling Approaches

Abstract

Petroleum hydrocarbon and its constituents belong to the family of carcinogens and neurotoxin organic pollutants. The introduction of hydrocarbon contaminants into the environment, particularly in large scale, may cause detrimental effects or impairment to human and other living organisms and also deteriorate the environment. Therefore, it is vital to have efficient corrective measures to tackle petroleum hydrocarbon problem. Most commonly used or conventional marine shoreline cleanup alternatives are of natural, physical and chemical methods. Conventionally, the primary response option is physical containment or recovery of bulk free oil followed by chemical processes and natural attenuation as a last resort. This option of choice has been routinely used worldwide. However, as the first response option, physical removal does not wholly remove oil spills. Chemicals method, on the other hand, has not been extensively used because of the continuous debate on their efficiency and the concerns of their environmental as well as toxicity effects. Ever since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the successful application of bioremediation has led this option as a particularly promising choice for elimination of oil from contaminated sites. Bioremediation’s ultimate advantage over common technologies is that the operation is comparably low cost and considered to be more environmental-friendly. Since bioremediation establishes on natural processes, it is less interfering and destructive towards the polluted sites. A current biggest challenge in the employment of bioremediation of crude oil is inadequate guidance concerning when and how to use this technology during an occurrence of the oil spill. This chapter aims to present an overview of bioaugmentation of petroleum hydrocarbon using locally isolated beneficial microorganisms (LIBeM) and the potential of incorporating biodegradation data into selected oil spill model to study the fate of oil plume during an occurrence of the oil spill.