USING PHYTOREMEDIATION AS A TOOL FOR IMPROVING A PETROLEUM HYDROCARBON CONTAMINATED SOIL

Abstract

Phytoremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated soils presents promising technology for environmental clean up using in situ treatment, especially in the developing countries. In the present study, the rhizospheric and non rhizosphereic soil samples was collected from three different locations which were non contaminated, contaminated by crud oil untreated and contaminated by crud oil grown with different plants respectively, theses location are in the same zoon area at Kafr Al-Elow Helwan city, Cairo governorate, Egypt. Results showed thatthe concentration of Cu, Zn, Fe, Mn, Cd, Ni, Pb in surface soil polluted (0-30 cm) by crud oil were increased to 4.1, 2.2, 6.9, 2.1, 4.2, 7.8 and 6.1 times, respectively, compared to unpolluted soil because of the crud oil pollution is often accompanied by the presence of high levels of heavy metals. Also, this increasing reduced with soil depth due to their low mobility. The highest loses in concentration of heavy metals and PAHs was recorded in the rhizospheric soil which planted with Alfalfa then Wheat followed by Sorghum respectively, thus the legume plants were suitable candidates for phytoremediation of soils contaminated with PAHs pollutants. On the other hand, the results indicated that the translocation of PAHs from root to shoot was considerably restricted, and the disparities of shoot PAHs concentrations for various plant species grown in soil polluted may be due to the shoot uptake of PAHs and accumulation from the ambient air, possibly originally volatized from the soils, was an important pathway for these PAHs intake by vegetable. In the pot experiment, Faba bean plants was able after 65 days to reduce total Acenaphthene, Phenanthrene and Pyrene in the rhizosphereic soil from 297.8, 21.0 and 251.3 to 51.8, 4.3 and 84.37 mg kg-1 soil respectively, (i.e. 82.6, 79.5 and 66.3 % loss).