Bioremediation of Marine Sediments Impacted by Petroleum

The aim of this work was to optimize the bioremediation of crude oil-contaminated sand sediment through the biostimulation technique. The soil was obtained in the mid-tide zone of Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and was artificially contaminated with crude oil at 14 g kg(-1). Bioremediation optimization was performed using an experimental design and statistical analysis of the following factors: supplementation with commercial biosurfactant Jeneil (R) IBR 425 and commercial mineral NPK fertilizer. The response variable used was the biodegradation of the heavy oil fraction, HOF. The analysis of the studied factors and their interactions was executed using contour plots, Pareto diagram and ANOVA table. Experimental design results indicated that the supplementation with fertilizer at 100:25:25 C/N/P ratio and biosurfactant at 2 g kg(-1) yielded biodegradation of HOF at about 30% during 30 days of process. Some experiments were carried out using the experimental design results, yielding 65% of biodegradation of HOF and 100% of n-alkanes between C15 and C30 during 60 process days. Intrinsic biodegradation test was carried out, yielding 85% of biodegradation of n-alkanes between C15 and C30 during 30 days of process.