Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bioremediation

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

It is well known that environmental pollution is a product of urbanization and technology aided by overpopulation, industrialization and mobilization that are crucial for the developing countries and not excluded happened in Malaysia. The pollution rates in urban areas are generally higher than in rural areas. The increasing number of factories that are built in order to fulfil the need of development in some areas has been the main cause of environmental pollution to air, water, soil, and noise pollution. Pollution can come from many sources; point sources or non-point sources including biological contaminants, chemical contaminants or physical contaminants. Heavy metal contamination

Bioremediation is the most effective treatment .to manage environmental pollution and being used widely including in Europe where the usage of microbes in the bioremediation is very helpful (Kumar et al. 2011). It is estimated that bioremediation would cost one-third to one-half that of incineration. Furthermore, the techniques usually can be expected to have minimal environmental impact, since bioremediation is a natural process (Laws n.d.). Bioremediation also not generating waste as the results of the process is completed contaminants degradation. However, there are a number of problems which are encountered with bioremediation as well. First, in order for organisms to successfully reduce pollutant levels, their population must increase. For this, their growth conditions must be determined and maintained at the contaminated sites. Controlling these conditions may prove difficult, particularly as conditions may vary so greatly among sites. In addition, the labor required to maintain optimal conditions may be extensive. Even in an ideal environment an organism may prefer to metabolize other more readily available nutrients within a contaminated area, or the pollutant may be completely or partially inaccessible to the degrading organism. Finally, the environment may contain substances or organism that inhibits growth of the degrading population.(L

To be specific, a research that had been done by Manisha Nanda, Dinesh Sharma, and Arun Kumar in 2011 had recorded that the reduction concentration of Copper by Bacillus spp. and Staphylococcus spp. are 62% and 34% respectively. Other research study was found that the maximum adsorption were observed for Chromium and Copper by Staphylococcus spp. at initial concentration value of 193.66mg/l and 105 mg/l and the biosorption under certain conditions were found to be 88.66mg/l and 44.94mg/l.(Ilhan et al.