Abstract
Oil spill has led to severe environmental and ecological problems. Due to the harsh environmental conditions, the bioremediation technology is not successfully used to remedy the oil spill in marine environment. In this study, immobilization technology was used to immobilize bacteria on natural organic carriers (i.e., wood chips and maize straw). The higher surface area of in wood chips leads to larger biomass density (0.0242 gVSS/g) than that of maize straw of 0.0097 gVSS/g carrier. Compared with biodegradation efficiency of free bacteria (44.79%), the immobilized bacteria on wood chips and maize straw reached to 73.39% and 52.28%, respectively. The high biological activity of the immobilized bacteria can be also explained by nutrients, such as TN (total nitrogen) and TP (total phosphorus), released from wood chips and maize straw, which was 8.83 mg/g and 5.53 mg/g, 0.0624 mg/g and 0.0099 mg/g, respectively.
Highlights
According to the previous literature[7,8,9,10], immobilization is the optimal bioremediation technology because of its many advantages, such as high biomass density, enhanced microbial stability and easy separation from the reaction environment
The degradation efficiencies of diesel were in the order of immobilized bacteria by wood chips (73.39%), immobilized bacteria by maize straw (52.28%) and free bacteria (44.79%)
This study investigated the diesel-degrading bacteria immobilized on natural organic carriers to improve the efficiency of immobilization in the marine environment
Summary
According to the previous literature[7,8,9,10], immobilization is the optimal bioremediation technology because of its many advantages, such as high biomass density, enhanced microbial stability and easy separation from the reaction environment. Several studies reported about implementing immobilization to degrade oil in the marine environment. Wang et al reported that the immobilized bacteria exhibit good salinity tolerance, with a diesel oil removal efficiency exceeding 85%14. The lack of nutrients (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus) limits the activity of immobilized bacteria in the treatment of oil pollution. Chen (2012) applied polyurethane–polyurea copolymer as an immobilization carrier and determined that the degradation efficiency is only 47.25% without providing sufficient nutrients[15]. Different natural organic carriers were used to immobilize diesel-degrading bacteria and degrade diesel in seawater effectively. This paper reports a new pathway of achieving high bioactivity and obtaining nutrients by using natural organic carriers; a useful strategy to remedy oil-polluted seawater is provided
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