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Co-composting of oil-based drilling cuttings by bagasse

Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering volume 43, pages 1–12 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

The feasibility of using a locally abundant bulking material (sugarcane bagasse) in Khuzestan province, Iran, to remove petroleum hydrocarbons from oil-based drill cuttings (OBDCs), using composting process, was investigated. OBDCs were collected from the discharge point of a drilling rig and bagasse was collected from a sugarcane agro-industry near Ahwaz. Experiments were performed in the dark and at room temperature, using different bagasse to OBDCs ratios. Degradation extent and kinetics of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) and poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), as well as dehydrogenase and urease enzymes activities and number of heterotroph bacteria during the co-composting of OBDCs and bagasse were studied and measured. Highest PAHs and TPH removals were observed when OBDCs were composted with 15% bagasse. After 70 days of incubation, PAHs and TPH were removed up to 24.8% and 67.5%, respectively. Studying the enzymes activities and number of heterotrophs with TPH and PAHs concentrations over time suggests that biodegradation is the main mechanism in the degradation process. The first-order kinetic model was fitted to the TPH and PAHs degradation data and contaminants half-lives were estimated to be in the range of 40–80 and 170–240 days respectively. DT90 values for TPH and PAHs were in the range of 120–260 and 560–1260 days, depending on the bagasse content.

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Acknowledgements

The source of data used in this paper was from the M.Sc. thesis of Farhad Safdari, a student graduated from Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences (AJUMS). The authors gratefully acknowledge AJUMS and the Environmental Technologies Research Center (ETRC) for financial support and providing necessary facilities to accomplish this research under Project Number ETRC- 9214.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

    Ali Akbar Babaei

  2. Environmental Technologies Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

    Ali Akbar Babaei & Farhad Safdari

  3. Environmental and Occupational Hazards Control Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Nadali Alavi

  4. Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Nadali Alavi

  5. School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

    Reza Bakhshoodeh

  6. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

    Hossein Motamedi

  7. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Pooya Paydary

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  1. Ali Akbar Babaei
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  2. Farhad Safdari
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  3. Nadali Alavi
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  4. Reza Bakhshoodeh
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  5. Hossein Motamedi
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Correspondence to Nadali Alavi.

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Babaei, A.A., Safdari, F., Alavi, N. et al. Co-composting of oil-based drilling cuttings by bagasse. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 43, 1–12 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-019-02195-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-019-02195-6

Keywords

  • Total petroleum hydrocarbons
  • Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
  • Composting
  • Oil-based drill cuttings
  • Bagasse