Abstract
Setting up of new industries or expansion of existing industrial establishments resulted in the disposal of industrial effluents, which discharge untreated effluents causing air, water, soil and solid waste pollution. Bioremediation is an ecologically sound and state-of-the-art technique that employs natural biological processes employing microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the natural environment altered by contaminants to its original condition. Compared with other technologies, such as thermal desorption and incineration, thermally enhanced recovery, chemical treatment, and in situ soil flushing (which may require further management of the flushing water), bioremediation may enjoy a cost advantage. Not all contaminants, however, are easily treated by bioremediation using microorganisms. While bioremediation can’t degrade inorganic contaminants, can be used to change the valence state of inorganic and cause adsorption, immobilization onto soil particulates, precipitation, uptake, accumulation, and concentration of inorganic in micro or microorganisms. This manuscript delineates the general processes of bioremediation within the soil environment, factors of bioremediation strategies, genetic engineering approaches, monitoring bioremediation, and further, the pros & cons of the technique, limitations and potential of both ex situ and in situ bioremediation as viable alternatives to conventional remediation are explained and addressed.
Highlights
Even though we can travel to the Moon, send robots to Mars, make super computers and clone organisms we still have difficulties to clean the water we use
The methodologies employed are not technically complex, considerable experience and expertise may be required to design and implement a successful bioremediation program, due to the need to thoroughly assess a site for suitability and to optimize conditions to achieve a satisfactory result
The emerging of recent studies in molecular biology and ecology offers opportunities for more efficient biological processes to detoxify contaminants
Summary
Even though we can travel to the Moon, send robots to Mars, make super computers and clone organisms we still have difficulties to clean the water we use. Bioremediation is an option that offers the possibility to destroy or render harmless various contaminants using natural biological activity As such, it uses relatively low-cost, low-technology techniques, which generally have a high public acceptance and can often be carried out on site. Bioremediation is the use of living organisms, primarily microorganisms, to degrade the environmental contaminants into less toxic forms It uses naturally occurring bacteria and fungi or plants to degrade or detoxify substances hazardous to human health and/or environment. The control and optimization of bioremediation processes is a complex system of many factors These factors include: the existence of a microbial population capable of degrading the pollutants; the availability of contaminants to the microbial population; the environment factors (type of soil, temperature, pH, the presence of oxygen or other electron acceptors, and nutrients) [21]. To avoid membrane fouling it is essential that turbidity, suspended solids, colloids and trace organics are to be removed prior to electro dialysis
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