Biodegradation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons, Areas regarding Research on Literature review

Biodegradation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons, Areas regarding Research on Literature review Biodegradation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons, Areas regarding Research on Crude Oil Biodegradation â€" Literature review Example > The paper “ Biodegradation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons, Areas regarding Research on Crude Oil Biodegradation” is a   forceful example of a literature review on environmental studies. Over the years, large amounts of Petroleum hydrocarbons contaminants are spilled into the environments as a result of human activities. While some oil releases can be controlled just like industrial gas emissions. However, catastrophic oil spills from pipelines, tankers, oil wells are largely accidental and cannot be avoided and in some are their occurrence is frequent. Such oil spillages pose a severe and sudden danger, with long-term environmental and ecological consequences, since too many hydrocarbons are lethal to both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. A number of physio-chemical methods of mitigating the effects of oil spillage contaminates have been developed (Table 1). Figure 1: Physiochemical Methods of the decontamination of Hydrocarbon Oils (Salleh, Ghazali, Raja, Basri, 2003) The majority of these methods are labor-intensive and expensive thus often causing the escalation of the pollution as the collected wastes end up being deposited in other clean zones (Salleh, Ghazali, Raja, Basri, 2003). (Guo-liang Zhang, 2005) asserts that the traditional method for treating oil spill pollution was by using floating booms through absorption by either natural or synthetic materials etc. , which however could not fully degrade the crude oil. A better method would be to adopt biodegradation. Biodegradation of hydrocarbons is, however, a very slow method of synthesizing the oil molecules under ambient conditions since it involves the hydrocarbons, environment and the composition of the microbial colony. The emphasis of research in the recent past is on the need to exploit the capabilities of the microbial population to degrade hydrocarbons to boost the rates of degradation found in nature. According to (Salleh, Ghazali, Raja, Basri, 2003), bioremediation, which re fers to the stabilization, or degradation of pollutants by microorganisms is a safe, effective and more economical alternative means of carrying out environmental clean-up. Crude oilCrude oil refers to liquid petroleum in its unrefined state. Chemicals, the principal constituents of crude oil are hydrogen and carbon (90% of the weight), which appear in the form of a series of compounds known as hydrocarbons. Other constituents present in crude oil include sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen compounds in small proportions (Salleh, Ghazali, Raja, Basri, 2003). In crude oil, sulfur exists as thiophenes, mercaptans, thioethers, etc. Oxygen compounds mainly include naphthenic acids and asphaltenes while nitrogen compounds occur in form of alkylated quinolones and pyridine. Also present in crude include traces of silicon, iron, nichrome and iron (Beal, 2000). Biodegradation and BioremediationBiodegradation signifies complete microbial atomization of complex materials into simple inorganic products such as water, carbon dioxide, and minerals and ultimate cell biomass. In terrestrial and aquatic environments, the biodegradation process of crude oil and other complex petroleum products mainly involves the actions of fungal and bacterial populations. According to (Salleh, Ghazali, Raja, Basri, 2003), bioremediation is the site restoration that consists of the elimination of organic compounds (contaminants) by microorganisms. The process exploits the natural metabolic flexibility of microorganisms to degrade the complex environmental contaminate compounds. Nowadays, bioremediation introduction of exogenous microbial populations called degraders or stimulating the indigenous microbial organisms to the contaminated substrate, in a process known as seeding. This bioremediation process provides a number of benefits such as destruction of the pollutant compounds, enhanced safety, reduced treatment costs as well as a lower environmental disturbance. (Beal, 2000), notes that the introduction is not the only remedy to the organic contamination, the continued growth of the microorganisms is affected by environmental factors such as soil type, the composition of the contaminant, nutrients available, soil type and temperature. The conditions stated above, therefore, affect the process of bioremediation as a means of cleanup. (Salleh, Ghazali, Raja, Basri, 2003), concludes that the effectiveness of the process differs considerably among the petroleum hydrocarbons; due susceptibility of the bacteria to metabolic breakdown; thus affecting the scop e of success and effectiveness of the process.