Bioremediation of Crude Oil-Contaminated Soil by Composting

Composting technology was used in the laboratory to simulate the remediation of the crude oil-contaminated soil collected from Jilin oil field. Consequently the contaminants removal paths and mechanism were discussed. The results showed that this method was effective in the remediation process. After 40 days, 45% crude oil was removed from the soil given the original oil content at 7.00x10(4) mg.kg(-1). The rate constant of biodegradation and half life was 0.0333d(-1) and 20.82d, respectively. Biodegradation was the main way of contaminant removal. Volatilization loss of crude oil was less than 0.1% of initial crude oil content. Among the three ratio of contaminated soil to organic fertilizer (dry weight) with the ratio of 8:2, 7:3 and 5:5 respectively, the highest removal of complete biodegradation of crude oil was observed in the ratio of 7:3, in which the complete biodegradation reached to 17% of the total removal. The rate and degree of biodegradation were highly related to the number and activity of microbe.