Perspectives of bioremediation as a panacea for ecological pollution

Abstract

Analyzing the prospects of bioremediation methods and technologies as a potential clean up solution and remedy to the current environmental pollution problems facing the world today. Due to the significant rise in the number of manufacturing/ heavy industries, increase in the volume of crude oil drilling, and refining and  transportation the area of contaminated land and water by heavy metals and  petroleum hydrocarbon has consequently increased has a result of accidents, spills, dumping, etc., posing serious risk to human health and livelihood, as well disrupting the ecosystem and climate. Bioremediation methods and  technologies can mostly be combined and carried out in a multi stage process to get best results. For  instance, in the event of an oil spill the initial Raskin, Ensley, 2000; Tyagi, et al, 2010; Alonge, 2016), as opposed to previous harmful and environmentally degrading clean up procedure should involve the physical / mechanical removal of excess crude oil from the surface of the  contaminated medium, by the use of hydraulic pumps, skimmers, boomers, surfactant’s etc. At the second stage a suitable  technique of microbial bioremediation can be applied, depending on the prevailing conditions. Lastly phytoremediation techniques can be applied at the final stages to complete the cleanup and restoration of the contaminated soil or water medium.

Keywords: Bioremediation, environmental pollution, phytoremediation, rhizosphere, petroleum hydrocarbon, heavy metals.