Importance of soil physical characteristics for petroleum hydrocarbons phytoremediation: A review

Abstract

Petroleum and petrochemical hydrocarbons for some places are serious sources of environmental pollutants. To remediate these contaminants, phytoremediation, a relatively low cost and an environmental friendly technique is recommended more widely, now more than ever. Successful and effective applying of hydrocarbons phytoremediation depends mainly on the soil and plant types and conditions and microbial activities and the interactions between these three factors. Although for the last several decades, various plant and organism’s species for the phytoremediation processes have been extensively studied, evaluating and characterizing soil properties, as an important objective for sustainable remediation and land use management, which had negligible considerations. An ideal soil for phytoremediation should have proper physical, chemical and biological characteristics to let the plant grow well and produce biomass as high as possible. It also should provide favorable conditions for microbial activities to perform efficient remediation. Soil physical characteristics such as texture, structure, water status and aeration are important factors affecting the microbial activities and consequently the degree of remediation potential. A better understanding of soil physical properties in conjunction with proper soil-plant-microbe management could be exploited to enhance the remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated soils and thus sustainable healthy environment.

Keywords: Phytoremediation, petroleum, hydrocarbon