Green Energy & Expo

Biography

Biography: Erika Elizabeth Barbosa Mireles

Abstract

Contamination of water and soil by hydrocarbons has increased in recent years. Hydrocarbons are widely known to be extremely polluting with toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic potential for humans while concern increases due to the difficulty to removing these compounds from the environment. This type of environmental contingencies arise direct effects on biota, since oil contains toxic chemicals that cause damage to plants, animals and humans but mainly on populations of microorganisms which represent an important part of the ecosystem and are key processes biogeochemicals. As an alternative to this problem bioremediation born; environmental technology as its main advantage is its versatility as it is a natural process of environmental self-sanitation and can adapt to the needs of each site. The denominated “hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria” are categorized according to the carbon source used when they are able to grow with alternative carbon sources. A number of these bacteria may yet be undiscovered and this bacterial can be used with the bioaugmentation technical to enhance the rate of remediation of contaminated natural systems by adding specific microorganisms to the system in this work used the “bacterial hydrocarbonoclastic”. Mexico is known for being one of world’s biggest oil producers and within its territory a number of natural oil seeps are found. In sites with these characteristics are known to exist hydrocarbonoclastic bacterial which have the distinctive ability to survive with hydrocarbons alone as carbon source (food) and facilitate mineralization by forming organic compounds more labile by breaking bonds. Due to the unique characteristics of these microorganisms, their use in soil environmental reclamation programs could be assumed.