Scientists at Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU) have developed an effective way to purify water from petroleum products by biological degradation. It will now be possible to eliminate pollution with the help of special bacteria that are "accustomed" to absorb the long carbon chains that make up petroleum products.
The team of Ekaterina Litvinova, Candidate of Biological Sciences, from NSTU-NETI, proposed to purify water contaminated with petroleum products using special bacteria capable of feeding on long carbon chains. Scientists at Novosibirsk University have adopted a method of nutrition that is familiar to single-celled organisms to eliminate the consequences of environmental disasters. A special biogel helps bacteria sink to the bottom, which protects them from negative environmental factors and is a carrier for them in the bottom layers.
According to Ekaterina Litvinova, head of the project "New Engineering Solutions and Artificial Intelligence for the Medical Industry" of the Priority 2030 program, we are talking about biodegradation. "This process takes place with the help of enzymes and those substances that bacteria produce in the course of their vital activity. Microorganisms that were once present in plants and trees, along with the remains of plants, turned into coal, and when humic acids were obtained from coal, the bacteria "came to life" again. These microorganisms have evolved to absorb long carbon chains, which are part of petroleum products, and now this "skill" will help eliminate the effects of pollution," Ekaterina Litvinova said.
The bacteria themselves are safe, and the technology of processing petroleum products is not difficult. It is enough to launch oil-destroying bacteria with biogel into polluted water and wait for them to split long carbon chains into smaller ones and decompose them into simple substances that can either be quickly disposed of using special traps, or wait for them to naturally turn into water and carbon dioxide. The only thing that will have to be controlled is the concentration of microorganisms: with a large or small accumulation of them, oil refining is ineffective.
The oil degradation process takes a little time at optimal temperatures. According to Ekaterina Litvinova, studies with fuel oil have shown that the results of processing are visually noticeable after two weeks: the fuel oil becomes soft and the water darkens, which indicates that the oil product is emulsified into water. The water is completely purified after 2-3 months. The scientists of NSTU-NETI conducted experiments in a closed system, but they are confident that in the natural environment the work of micrographs will be more efficient and will take even less time — up to one and a half months. If we add traps (special devices for collecting decomposition products), the process will be faster and it will be possible to purify the water by more than 90%.
The NSTU-NETI scientists plan to explore the possibilities of petro-destructive bacteria in biogels further — interesting projects already exist in the field of oil production and refining industry.
Earlier, scientists at NSTU-NETI proposed an innovative method for cleaning soils from oil and petroleum products. The basis of the development was a protective shield that helps to quickly collect mixtures of hydrocarbons after their spill.