ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the historical development of petroleum bioremediation, from early attempts to clean up marine oil spills to more recent investigations of nonmarine systems. Indigenous microbes from the soils were cultured and selected to degrade each petroleum contaminant. Bioremediation is often an appropriate choice of treatment process for many industrial and toxic or hazardous wastes, both before and after they are discharged to the environment. Petroleum hydrocarbons have been separated from industrial wastewaters using their insolubility. Large concentrations of such hydrocarbons can be recovered by physical processes. Full-scale remediation operations in the field are difficult to document, since environmental conditions are normally variable and uncontrolled. Microbial communities were selected from these petroleum-contaminated soils that could, under proper environmental conditions, degrade the petroleum contamination. The similar petroleum desorption rates provided comparable availability of petroleum substrate for the microbial communities for degradation; yet all the degradation rates were different.
