PROBLEM STATEMENT: Petroleum hydrocarbons, and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are found to contaminate groundwater and soils, are usually treated by pump-and-treat methods, which are very time-consuming, expensive, and not very effective. We are proposing the use of pervaporation for effectively removing these hydrocarbons and VOCs from contaminated soil and groundwater (with or...

Oil spills from pipeline ruptures are a major source of terrestrial petroleum pollution in cold regions. However, our knowledge of the bacterial response to crude oil contamination in cold regions remains to be further expanded, especially in terms of community shifts and potential development of hydrocarbon degraders. In this study we investigated changes of microbial diversity, population siz...

Although mass spectrometry has been studied extensively in the past 50 years for analysis of petroleum and other fossil fuels, comprehensive characterization of total petroleum composition across a wide boiling range remains a challenge. In this work, we report our efforts in combining GC separation, field Ionization, and time-of-flight high-resolution mass spectrometry (GC-FI-TOF HRMS) for det...

Over the past decades rapid growth in industrial and agricultural activities, waste disposal and etc., have significantly contributed to extensive soil contamination. Total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) are one of the most common groups of persistent organic contaminants. To date, many developing countries like Iran have almost completely relinquished remediation of oil-polluted soils due to th...

Members of the Sphingomonas genus are often isolated from petroleum-contaminated soils due to their unique abilities to degrade polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are important for in situ bioremediation. In this study, a combined phenotypic and genotypic approach using streptomycin-containing medium and Sphingomonas-specific PCR was developed to isolate and identify culturable Sphi...

Pollution history has often been proposed to explain site-dependent bioremediation efficiencies, but this hypothesis has been poorly explored. Here, bacteria and their heterotrophic nanoflagellates (HNF) predators originating from pristine and chronically oil-polluted coastal sites were subjected to crude oil ± nutrients or emulsifier amendments. The addition of crude oil had a more visible eff...

The precipitation of chromium(III), copper(II), manganese(II) and zinc(II) by biogenic hydrogen sulfide generated by sulfate-reducing bacteria, Desulfovibrio sp., and the degradation of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) in the presence of heavy metal by Pseudomonas aeruginosa AT18 have been carried out. An anaerobic stirred tank reactor was used to generate hydrogen sulfide with Desulfovibrio ...

Microbial degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons is one of the major practices in the natural decontamination process. We tested the effectiveness of some carriers and immobilization methodology for four cultures of hydrocarbon-degrading strains isolated from oil-polluted wastewater of the American Petroleum Institute (API) separators (1, 2, and 4) of the Alexandria Petroleum Company (APC), Alex...

Petroleum hydrocarbon profiles of water and sediment samples of Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa were assessed using standard analytical procedures. Water (from surface and bottom levels) and sediment samples were collected from five locations in the bay from February to June 2016. Extraction of the petroleum hydrocarbons from the water and sediment samples collected was a...

Background: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which consist of fused conjugated aromatic rings, not only are toxic to humans and other living organisms, but will also pollute groundwater. These compounds can be point source or non-point source and are one of the most widespread organic pollutants. Some of them are suspected carcinogens and are linked to other health problems. This study ...