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Alternating current enhanced bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated soils

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Abstract

In this work, bioremediation was applied with sinusoidal alternating current (AC) electric fields to remove petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) for soil remediation. Applying AC electric field with bioremediation (AC+BIO) could efficiently remove 31.6% of the TPH in 21 days, much faster than that in the BIO only system (13.7%) and AC only system (5.5%). When the operation time extended to 119 days, the AC+BIO system could remove 73.3% of the TPH. Applying AC electric field (20–200 V/m) could maintain the soil pH at neutral, superior to the direct current electric field. The maximum difference between soil temperature and the room temperature was 1.9 °C in the AC (50 V/m) +BIO system. The effects of AC voltage gradient (20–200 V/m) on the microorganisms and TPH degradation efficiency by AC+BIO were investigated, and the optimized AC voltage gradient was assessed as 50 V/m for lab-scale experiments. The microbial community structures in the BIO and AC+BIO systems were compared. Although Pseudomonas was the dominant species, Firmicutes became more abundant in the AC+BIO system than the BIO system, indicating their adaptive capacity to the stress of the AC electric field. Real petroleum-contaminated soil was used as a reaction matrix to evaluate the performance of AC+BIO in the field. The initial current density was about 0.2 mA/cm2, voltage gradient was about 20 V/m, and the average TPH degradation rate was 8.1 μg/gdry soil per day. This study provided insights and fundamental supports for the applications of AC+BIO to treat petroleum-polluted soils.

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Supplementary material contained the necessary information of the microorganisms (Text. S1), experimental procedures (Text. S2), microbial cultivation processes (Fig. S1), schematic figure of sampling points (Fig. S2), the lab-scale experimental setup (Fig. S3), the designed equipment for field trial (Fig. S4), microbial cultivation under aerobic and anaerobic conditions (Fig. S5-S6), temperature changes in the BIO, EC, and AC+BIO systems (Fig. S7), cultivation material constitutes (Table S1 & S2), soil parameters (Table S3), AC+BIO system parameters (Table S4), and α-diversity indexes of BIO and AC+BIO system (Table S5).

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful for the support from the funding and their institutes.

Funding

This project was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial key research and development program (2019C03102), the China Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment (2017ZX07101003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21961160742, 22075245), and the Department of Education of Zhejiang Province (Y201534982). Ying was thankful to the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M662064).

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Author notes

  1. Ying Huang and Zhongwei He contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Ying Huang, Zhongwei He, Bin Yang, Yang Hou, Lecheng Lei & Zhongjian Li

  2. Polytechnic Institute, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310015, China

    Zhongwei He

  3. Environmental Science Research & Design Institute of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Lili Xu

  4. Institute of Zhejiang University - Quzhou, Quzhou, 32400, China

    Bin Yang, Yang Hou, Lecheng Lei & Zhongjian Li

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  1. Ying Huang
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Contributions

Ying Huang finished the draft, edited the manuscript, and revised the manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. Zhongwei He finished the experiments and prepared the outline of the manuscript. Ying Huang and Zhongwei He contributed equally to this manuscript. Zhongjian Li gave the idea of the manuscript. Lili Xu, Bin Yang, Yang Hou, and Lecheng Lei reviewed the whole manuscript with critical comments.

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Correspondence to Zhongjian Li.

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Huang, Y., He, Z., Xu, L. et al. Alternating current enhanced bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated soils. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 47562–47573 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13942-2

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