Sawdust assisted bioremediation of PMS hydrocarbon impacted agricultural soil in Niger Delta Nigeria

Abstract

Sawdust evaluation in bioremediation of PMS hydrocarbon polluted agricultural soil was carried out. The effect of different parameters; total petroleum hydrocarbon, dehydrogenase activity, optical density and pH on bioremediation performance were evaluated. Studied parameters such as microbial dynamics and hydrocarbon removal were found to be higher in sawdust amended system and differed significantly with control at p< 0.05. Constant removal efficiency (96.0 %) was observed in SA option from week 6 while NA proceded relatively slow and produced 71.0 % on week 8 of the study. First order kinetic gave high r² values (0.945), first order degradation constant (0.47 d^-1), and shorter degradation half-life (1.50 d). Micrococcus luteus, and Rhizopus arrhizus were isolated in the study which displayed extreme PMS hydrocarbon utilization. The use of sawdust greatly increased biodegradation rate and resulted in effective PMS hydrocarbon clean up. Therefore, sawdust provides alternative source of bioremediation material for abundant hydrocarbon spill.