The Surveying of Soil and Groundwater Pollution in a Petroleum Refinery and the Potential of Bioremediation for Oil Decontamination

Abstract

Soil contamination with crude oil is an important worldwide issue and the remediation of oil contaminated soils, sediments and groundwater is a major environmental challenge. In the target area of this survey, which is a petroleum refinery near Tehran, soil and groundwater pollution, and its source, contaminated area, and distribution of pollution were studied by means of different measurements. Oil content and volatile organic compounds were measured to determine soil and groundwater contamination. The investigations showed that the contamination of soil which is mainly silt and clay has reached to the groundwater which is around 20 m underground and formed an oily layer mainly containing gasoline, kerosene, and gas oil with different thicknesses in the whole area. The free oil existing over the groundwater table could be removed by physical ways such as pump and treat method but decontamination of soil is more complex. Due to long-lasting contamination of the field, the existence of accumulated indigenous microorganisms and the probable ability of them to effectively biodegrade pollutants by man-assisted interventions are expected. In this survey in order to clarify the contamination problem, some experiments have been done on the region soil and groundwater. Besides, the feasibility assessment of bioremediation in the investigated area is performed.

Characterization of multiple metal resistant Bacillus licheniformis and its potential use in arsenic contaminated industrial wastewater

“…As conventional cleanup strategies are being used to remove the heavy metal ions from the polluted areas but these are expensive and feasible only in small areas. Researchers have found new cost effective methods that include the use of microorganisms (Naureen and Rehman 2016;Sher et al 2020b), biomass (Jaafari and Yaghmaeian 2019;Sultana et al 2020) and live plants (Zargar et al 2013;Ojuederie and Babalola 2017).…”

Feasibility of greenhouse gas emissions offsets for natural source zone depletion of petroleum hydrocarbons

“…Petroleum releases to the environment occur across the extraction (Fisher & Sublette, ; Nigerian Federal Ministry of Environment [FME], ), refining (Pasadakis, Gidarakos, Kanellopoulou, & Spanoudakis, ; Schneider et al., ; Zargar, Sarrafzadeh, Taheri, & Tavakoli, ), and storage (Arnold, Parfitt, & Kaltreider, ; Biesterveld, Scheiter, & Marsh, ; Kehew & Lynch, ) phases of resource use. Released hydrocarbons in the terrestrial subsurface tend to be spread across multiple phases, including as sorbed chemicals to soil organic matter, as dissolved components within groundwater, as gases within vadose zone pore spaces, and as light nonaqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) across the soil column and particularly near the water table (Newell, Acree, Ross, & Huling, ).…”

A hybrid method combining discharge-assisted laser induced breakdown spectroscopy with wavelet transform for trace elemental analysis in liquid targets

“…It was reported that these industrial emissions were accidently and carelessly discharged into the lakes, rivers, and oceans, resulting in the formation of a large area of oil pollution throughout the world. [8][9][10][11] This oil pollution not only causes tremendous hazard to the natural environment that humans closely depend on, but also undermines the sustainable development of the ecological environment. Quantitative analysis of liquid oil pollutants is essential for tracing the source of pollutant elements and crucial to the subsequent promulgation and implementation of reasonable prevention and governance measures.…”