| he objective of present work was to study the application of bioremediation to an industrially contaminated soil containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, commonly abbreviated as PAH or PNA. The soil was obtained from Alberta Research Council, Alberta, Canada, and identified as Site-1 soil.;A preliminary study involved physical and chemical property analysis of soil including pH, CHN and P analysis, TOC, CEC, clay content and heavy metal content. The dry-sieve analysis was conducted to determine particle-size distribution. The homogenized soil fraction of size 425-2500 ;Bioremediation experiments were conducted at lab-scale in batch-mode using Acinetobacter and Phanerochaete Chrysosporium to treat the PAH contamination in soil. The effect of soil pH, temperature, oxygen amendment, treatment time, and presence of surfactant on soil decontamination was studied. The experiments were conducted in packed-bed and slurry reactors to study the soil decontamination under different mixing conditions. The slurry-bioremediation of soil was studied at two temperatures over a 5-week treatment. A simple linear regression analysis using SAS showed a good fit of first order kinetic model to the data and provided estimates for rate constants and half lives.;Since most PAHs in the soil were hydrophobic and sparingly soluble in water, two physico-chemical treatments, namely, surfactant-enhanced soil washing and coal-soil agloflotation were used to desorb the PAHs from soil particles. Surfactant-enhanced soil washing was studied to determine the optimal surfactant concentration, washing solution to soil ratio, and temperature. Coal-soil agloflotation was studied to determine the optimal treatment conditions of agloflotation time, mixing speed, washing liquid to soil ratio and coal to soil ratio.;Bioremediation of soil in slurry reactors using both the microorganisms resulted in 80% or higher PAH removal over a 5-week treatment period and 97% and higher removal over a 8-12 week treatment period. A single-stage soil washing operation using a nonionic surfactant solution in water resulted in 60%... |
