Marine Environmental Protection: A Highly Efficient Method of Degradation of Heavy Oil Pollution on Coastal Beaches

Abstract

Coastal oil pollution, especially occurring on coastal beach, is thorny issue when it comes to environmental restoration. Today, bioremediation is the current method used in treating beach oil pollution. Although it has undergone some improvements, this method still doesn't work very well. In this paper, a highly efficient procedure in bioremediation is studied. This method, using more varieties of microbes and water recirculation, may degrade heavy oil in a few days. Three sets are designed into this study. The method in Set 1 is a traditional degradation using a single microbe with only fertilizers and dispersant. The method in Set 2 is a highly efficient degradation process with more varieties of microbes, fertilizers, dispersant, fresh water recirculation and pumped-in air supplying. Set 3 is s control set which degrades heavy oil with the original microbe in beach sand only. Results of these experiments show that the process used in Set 2 will completely degrade heavy oil within 60 days. This is more efficient than by the traditional method as in Set 1, which takes more than 200 days.