Bio-Based Decontamination and Detoxification of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Dredged Sediments: Perspectives to Produce Constructed Technosols in the Frame of the Circular Economy

Abstract

To accelerate the depletion of total petroleum hydrocarbons, a hydrocarburoclastic ascomycetes, Lambertella sp. MUT 5852, was bioaugmented to dredged sediments co-composting with a lignocellulosic matrix. After only 28 days of incubation, a complete depletion of the contamination was observed. The 16S rDNA metabarcoding of the bacterial community and a predictive functional metagenomic analysis were adopted to evaluate potential bacterial degrading and detoxifying functions. A combination of toxicological assays on two eukaryotic models, the root tips of Vicia faba and the human intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells, was adopted to assess the robustness of the process not only for the decontamination but also for the detoxification of the dredged sediments. Bacterial taxa, such as Kocuria and Sphingobacterium sps., resulted to be involved in both the decontamination and detoxification of the co-composting dredged sediments by potential activation of diverse oxidative processes. At the same time, the Kocuria sp. showed plant growth-promoting activity by the potential expression of the 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase activity, providing functional traits of interest for a technosol in terms of sustaining primary producer growth and development.