Avaliação do efeito do tratamento com surfactante químico e Pseudomonas aeruginosa LBI na toxicidade de solo contaminado com óleo lubrificante usado

Petroleum and its subproducts are considered a treat for the environmental quality because of the many environmental accidents that may occur during exploitation, transport and storage. A common remediation technique used in the contaminated areas is based on the use of surfactants, mainly the chemical ones, because they have low production costs. In the other hand, some microorganisms have indicate capacities of producing surfactants that emulsify substances and as result, offer a bigger contact surface for the microbiota degradation. This biossurfactants stand out in comparison with the chemical surfactants because they present lower micelar concentration values, are more tolerant for temperature and pH variation, because they are biodegradable, have low toxicity, higher emulsification and hydrocarbon solubilization index. In this way, after the surfactant application, a toxicity evaluation have to be made to identify the treatment effects. In soil, the activity of some microbial enzymes can show the environmental behavior of the contaminant under different treatment conditions. Dehydrogenase is one example of those enzymes that can demonstrate indirectly the effect of the pollutant on the soil microorganisms. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the toxicity after the addition of a surfactant and/or Pseudomonas aeruginosa LBI in soil contaminated by a mineral automotive lubricant. The previous mentioned bacteria are a potential biossurfactant (rhamnolipid) producer. In order to evaluate the toxicity, the dehydrogenase test was run. In this test, trifeniltetrazolium compound (TTC) after utilized as an electron acceptor, turns into trifenil formazan (TPF), that can be indirectly quantified using the absorbance measured by the spectrophotometer UV-visible. In this way, it was possible to quantify the dehydrogenase activity from the contaminated soil samples... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)