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Leaching and microbial treatment of a soil contaminated by sulphide ore ashes and aromatic hydrocarbons

  • Environmental Biotechnology
  • Published:
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Abstract

Contaminated soil from a historical industrial site and containing sulfide ore ashes and aromatic hydrocarbons underwent sequential leaching by 0.5 M citrate and microbial treatments. Heavy metals leaching was with the following efficiency scale: Cu (58.7%) > Pb (55.1%) > Zn (44.5%) > Cd (42.9%) > Cr (26.4%) > Ni (17.7%) > Co (14.0%) > As (12.4%) > Fe (5.3%) > Hg (1.1%) and was accompanied by concomitant removal of organic contaminants (about 13%). Leached metals were concentrated into an iron gel, produced during ferric citrate fermentation by the metal-resistant strain BAS-10 of Klebsiella oxytoca. Concomitantly, the acidic leached soil was bioaugmented with Allescheriella sp. DABAC 1, Stachybotrys sp. DABAC 3, Phlebia sp. DABAC 9, Pleurotus pulmonarius CBS 664.97, and Botryosphaeria rhodina DABAC P82. B. rhodina was most effective, leading to a significant depletion of the most abundant contaminants, including 7-H-benz[DE]anthracene-7-one, 9,10-anthracene dione and dichloroaniline isomers, and to a marked detoxification as assessed by the mortality test with the Collembola Folsomia candida Willem. The overall degradation activities of B. rhodina and P. pulmonarius appeared to be significantly enhanced by the preliminary metal removal.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Interuniversitary Consortium “The Chemistry for the Environment” (I.N.C.A.) that supported, with the contribution of Italian Ministry of Environment, this work within the “Sisifo” Project (“ACNA-Bonifica di siti contaminati”). Further thanks are due to Prof. G. Cao (I.N.C.A. Laboratory, Cagliari, Italy) for providing diffractometric analyses of the ACNA soil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Agrobiologia e Agrochimica, University of Tuscia, Via S. C. De Lellis, 01100, Viterbo, Italy

    Alessandro D’Annibale, Vanessa Leonardi & Maurizio Petruccioli

  2. Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale e Scienze Biochimiche, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Ermanno Federici

  3. Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Cà Foscari University, Venice, Italy

    Franco Baldi

  4. Interuniversitary Consortium “The Chemistry for the Environment”, Venice, Italy

    Fulvio Zecchini

Authors
  1. Alessandro D’Annibale
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  2. Vanessa Leonardi
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  3. Ermanno Federici
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  4. Franco Baldi
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  5. Fulvio Zecchini
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  6. Maurizio Petruccioli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maurizio Petruccioli.

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D’Annibale, A., Leonardi, V., Federici, E. et al. Leaching and microbial treatment of a soil contaminated by sulphide ore ashes and aromatic hydrocarbons. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 74, 1135–1144 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-006-0749-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-006-0749-z

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