HYDROCARBON DEGRADATION AND ACCUMULATION BY Sansevierialiberica Gerome and Labroy POLLUTED WITH CRUDE OIL

📄 Project Abstract

Crude oil is a crucial energy resource and vital industrial raw material. With increasing industrial production, oil pollution has become a serious worldwide environmental problem, especially at the oil mining stage in the field (Zhu et al., 2013). Large-scale crude oil spills on soil, leakages from pipelines, underground and surface fuel storage tanks, indiscriminate spills and careless disposal and mismanagement of wastes and other petroleum by-products constitute the major sources of petroleum contamination in our environment. Oil spillage on soil has many detrimental effects on the composition, structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, including loss of biodiversity (Osuji et al., 2004). Soil contamination arising from oil spills is one of the most limiting factors to soil fertility. It affects growth of plants thereby causing negative impacts on food productivity (Onwurahet al., 2007). High levels of petroleum hydrocarbons which include alkanes (paraffin), alkenes (olef...