Bioremediation and Sustainability is an up-to-date and comprehensive
treatment of research and applications for some of the most important
low-cost, "green," emerging technologies in chemical and environmental
engineering
Sustainable development requires the development and promotion of
environmental management and a constant search for green technologies to
treat a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial habitats contaminated by
increasing anthropogenic activities with the main sources of
contaminants being the chemical industries. Bioremediation is a
technique that uses living organisms in order to degrade or transform
contaminants into their less toxic forms. It is based on the existence
of microorganisms with the capacity to attack the compounds on the
enzymatic level.
Bioremediation is an increasingly popular low-cost alternative to
conventional methods for treating wastes and contaminated media with the
possibility to degrade these contaminants using natural microbial
activity mediated by different consortia of microbes. Over the last few
years, the scientific literature has revealed the progressive emergence
of various bioremediation techniques. Bioremediation and Sustainability
presents an up-to-date and comprehensive collection of chapters prepared
in bioremediation technology research and applications.
The strategies covered in this volume can be applied in situ or ex situ,
depending on the site in which they will be applied. In situ is the
treatment done in the site of the contamination, and ex situ involves
the removal of soil or water to subsequent treatment. There is a wide
variety of techniques that have been developed in the past and are
covered in this volume, such as natural attenuation, bioaugmentation,
biostimulation, biosorption, composting, phytoremediation,
rhizoremediation, and bioleaching.
