Essay On Petroleum Hydrocarbons

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The worldwide consumption of petroleum hydrocarbons yearly was evaluated around 1012 US gallons (Prince, 1993). A greater percentage of this oil is transported via water and unavoidably oil spills from pipelines and tankers. Some amount of these over flown crude oil or cleaning of storage tanks gradually form tar balls and pollute the beaches. The smaller tar balls often accumulate to form the bigger ones. Organic and inorganic particles are entrapped within the tar balls due to the action of wind and waves. These either get submerged into the ocean or are washed to the shore. The tar balls vary according to the locality (AbdulKadir Elshafie et al.,2007)
Crude oil is made up of complex mixture of hydrocarbons and non-hydrocarbon compounds, harmful to organisms. (Nelson and Smith, 1973)
The effects of the petroleum products and its derivatives on the environment, flora and fauna depend on the composition and concentration of the products at the time of spillage. Contamination immediately starts showing vigorous effects on plant and animal life. (Baker, 1970; Steinhart and Steinhart, 1972; …show more content…

A few cellulolytic species are found at depths of about of 1 km, but generally marine fungi seem to be rare in the ocean depth (Kohlmeyer and Kohlmeyer, 1979). Kohlmeyer (1983) stated that the major factors that control the distribution of marine fungi are availability of substrates or hosts, temperature, hydrostatic pressure and oxygen. However in situ evidence that fungi express hydrocarbonclastic activity in the natural environment is still infrequent. A variety of filamentous fungi that are hydrocarbonclastic in nature have been isolated from the ocean. Marine fungi growing in sand have not been scrutinized for degrading hydrocarbons and there is no clue of any association of such fungi with any kind of hydrocarbon

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