Mikaela Pricher Environmental Microbiology Dr.

Arango 5 April 2013 Oil Biodegradation and Bioremediation

The Exxon Valdez and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spills were two of the worst oil spills in history. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred when the oil tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling about 11 million gallons of crude oil. This oil then spread as a surface slick, covering a vast portion of the surface of the water and even reaching a large portion of the shoreline. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred when high-pressure oil and gas escaped from the oil tanker's exploratory well into the Gulf of Mexico. The estimated amount of oil released was about 205.8 million gallons. Despite the huge magnitude of these oil spills and their detrimental effects on the environment, the efforts of biodegradation and bioremediation were able to successfully clean up the spill sites and eventually return the environments back to normal. In the case of the Exxon Valdez spill, the oil spread merely as a surface slick it did not sink to great depths. However, it did reach a good portion of the shoreline, which was cleaned up through the efforts of bioremediation. Fertilizer application was employed on the oiled shorelines according to results achieved from field tests. These tests suggested that fertilizer addition enhanced the rates of biodegradation of the hydrocarbon-degrading microorganisms already living there. In total, two different fertilizers were chosen depending on criteria such as retention, availability, and lack of toxicity. These two fertilizers were the oleophillic fertilizer Inipol EAP22 and the slow release fertilizer Customblen 28-8-0. This was denoted as the largest use of bioremediation in history, using 107,000 pounds of fertilizer and involving 2,237 shoreline applications. It was very successful in cleaning the shorelines and by 1992, 3 years after the spill occurred, the clean-up was concluded.

The bioremediation techniques employed to clean up the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill were very different from those used for the Exxon Valdez spill and this was due to the different nature of the two spills. Whereas the Exxon Valdez spill was merely a surface slick, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill was a leak from a well which was 5000 feet below the surface of the water. Also, the BP oil spill released a much greater volume of oil than the Exxon Valdez spill more than one order of magnitude greater as well as natural gas. Therefore, a dispersant called COREXIT 9500 was injected directly at the well head/end of the riser pipe of the well at a water depth of 1500 m. This was employed in order to disperse the oil at a depth which would prevent large slicks from forming directly at the surface of the water above the wellhead. This would also prevent the oil from impacting the shoreline, as it did in the Exxon Valdez spill. Although successful for the most part, there have still been reports which have showed sediment contamination at the wellhead and evidence for the presence of oil in the cores. Although these efforts seemed to be very successful in cleaning the oil spills, there are also other bioremediation strategies which can be employed to clean up the environment these include bioventing and air sparging (addition of oxygen), the addition of nutrients, or bioaugmentation which includes the addition of microorganisms or genetic material. There are also alternatives to bioremediation which can be used these are called physico-chemical processes and they include air stripping, soil-vapor extraction, carbon adsorption, steam stripping, chemical oxidation, and combustion.