Comparative Study on Different Remediation Strategies Applied in Petroleum-Contaminated Soils

Abstract

Due to the increasing pollution by petroleum hydrocarbons (PHs), it is an important task to develop eco-friendly and highly efficient methods for remediating petroleum-contaminated soils. In this study, bioremediation technology was applied to remediate PHs contaminated soils, and the bacterial community structure and physicochemical characteristics of the soil treated using different bioremediation regimens were analyzed. Compared with the control condition (S0), the PHs removal efficiency of biostimulation (S2) and bioaugmentation (S3) was increased significantly. Combined biostimulation with bioaugmentation (S4) had the highest PHs removal efficiency, up to 60.14 ± 4.12%. Among all the selected remediation strategies (S1–S4, S1: soil moisture content: 25–30%), the bacterial alpha-diversity was higher than in S0. The genera Acinetobacter, Escherichia-Shigella, Bacteroides, Microbacterium, and Parabacteroides were found to greatly contribute to PHs’ degradation. In the group S4, the PH-degraders and soil enzyme activity were higher than in the other remediation regimens, and these indices gradually decreased in the mid-to-later periods of all remediation tests. Additionally, the abundance of alkB and nah genes was increased by improving the environmental condition of the microorganism communities. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that the total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) had a positive correlation with total PHs degradation. This study offers insights into the microbial community response to environmental factors during bioremediation, which shows a promoting effect in enhancing the efficiency of PHs remediation.