Electro-bioremediation of oil tank bottoms

Oil tank bottoms have a significant oil concentration, which is recovered by physical and chemical methods. The waste remaining after this process can be remediated by microorganisms. In this study, the benefits of integrating electro-bioremediation, which is an hybrid technology coupling bioremediation and electro kinetics to decontaminate contaminated oil tank bottoms were evaluated in 69-day-long laboratory-scale experiments. The unsaturated oil tank bottom sample was placed in three-compartment electro-bioremediation glass cells with a potential difference of 0.5V cm -1, applied to the electro-bioremediation cells for 69 days. Aliphatic and polyaromatichydrocarbons decreased from 80741.4 ppm to 32341.2ppm and from 414.2 ppm to 24.344 ppm respectively. The pH changed from 7.26 to 7.47 in the cathode and to 7.8 in the anode.