Modelling the btx contaminants degradation in soil environment using bioremediation techniques

A number of studies on the bioremediation techniques on the degradation of benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX) contaminants by microorganisms were reported in the 1980s and 1990s. Petroleum exploration, exploitation and production in Niger Delta Area of Nigeria has resulted to high environmental degradation. However, challenges have existed for the implementation of degradable environment due to BTX contaminants as well as instability of soil characteristics due to high production effect. The research was carried out to determine the usefulness of bioremediation techniques in the degradation of BTX contaminants in soil environment. This paper thus reviews the effect of soil characteristics and its overall performance of microbes as functional parameters of BTX contaminants degradation as well as discusses the evalution of rate constant of Benzene, Toluene, Xylene and maximum specific rate constant. The result obtained from the research showed that there was significant decrease in the concentration of toluene from 46.07 mg/kg to 40.05 mg/kg, Benzene (39.06 – 36.42) mg/kg and Xylene (53.09 -52 .72) mg /kg meaning that the microorganisms are friendly with Toluene compared to other contaminants as investigated. It was recommended that bioremediation should be used in monitoring and predicting the degradation rate of BTX contaminants in soil environments upon the influences soil characteristics and composition.