Bioaugmentation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: A Review

In recent years, the application of bioaugmentation (BA) technology in the remediation of wastewater has received much attention throughout the world. BA provides a profitable and promising concept, which is not only money-spinning but also eco-friendly. It is a novel remediation technology that can be applied to clean up the environmental contaminants especially persistent organic pollutants and supplement a healthy ecosystem by using methods where the pollutants are transformed into inert materials by microbial action and through biochemical progression which drive main action on remediation of toxic contaminants. In this method, selected microorganisms were applied to transform the recalcitrant pollutants into inert materials through various catalytic pathways. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is one such group of highly toxic and carcinogen pollutants, hence there arises the crucial need to remediate contaminated water by BA technology. This chapter provides a brief outline of bioaugmentation technology along with different factors that influence the degradation process and considers the bioremediation prospect of persistent organic pollutants especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with the implication of bioaugmentation technology for environmental cleanup.