Study of the biological destructive separation of hazardous contaminants from town gas soils

Abstract

Soil contamination from hazardous materials has existed since the beginning of the industrial age. At that time, unwanted liquid products were disposed of by dumping into unlined pits. Today, the chemical industry is faced with cleaning up these old hazardous waste sites as well as any new site. The hardest part associated with successful soil remediation is the separation of the adsorbed contaminant from the soil. Current research has demonstrated promising results for the destructive separation of hazardous contaminants using bioremediation. This paper addresses the process and results for biological destruction of contaminants from a town gas soil using Mycobacterium sp.