Abstract

JIMENEZ HERNANDEZ, Verónica  and  GUERRA SANCHEZ, Ricardo. Obtaining of an enriched medium to increasing the bioavailability of weathered hydrocarbons in a coastal soil. Rev. Int. Contam. Ambient [online]. 2016, vol.32, n.4, pp.413-424. ISSN 0188-4999.  https://doi.org/10.20937/RICA.2016.32.04.05.

The weathered hydrocarbons are mainly constituted of highly persistent heavy petroleum fractions. Thus, the soil chemical complexity delays the hydrocarbon biodegradation. The objective of this study was to increase the bioavailability of highly persistent compounds by obtaining the greatest nutritional conditions for indigenous microorganisms. A consortium was previously adapted in order to achieve the full potential of degradation through the biostimulation process which was carried out by the Plackett-Burman analytic method experiments. These experiments conducted to a specific combination of nutrients, which provided the minimum requirements for the hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria to efficiently improve their metabolic processes. The biodegradation of hydrocarbons were estimated based on the heavy oil/kg dry soil, CO2 production/kg dry soil, as well as the alteration of certain physicochemical characteristics, such as pH, EC (µS/cm), moisture and organic matter percentage. In conclusion, these analyses provide a contribution to the study of bioavailability of weathered hydrocarbons by controlling conditions in a nutrient biostimulation process and through the design of experiments. Likewise, a microbial consortium adapted to a 1 % concentration of Mayan crude, resulted in an up to 97 % increase in hydrocarbon degradation in the coastal weathered soil, which were expressed as a heavy fraction of hydrocarbons in a period of 28 days of degradation.

Keywords : crude oil; weathering; recalcitrance; biostimulation.

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