Research Product

Bioaugmentation as a strategy in bioremediation has great potential but has had little success to support its use. Problems have arisen because of a general inability to support the growth and/or activity of the introduced organism in the environment because of competition factors, poor survival of the inoculum, and grazing by protozoa. A specialized technique that has been used to overcome these problems is cell immobilization or encapsulation, in which the inoculant can be placed in environmental media in a way that reduces competition from the indigenous microflora and allows expression of the specific introduced metabolic function. Packaging of specific bacterial or fungal cells in a porous polymeric material potentially improves storage of inocula, and enhances the capability of directly introducing viable and active cells into environmental material at some future time without the need to regrow the cells. We have been experimenting with encapsulation/immobilization procedures for use in the bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-contaminated soil. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential usefulness of polyurethane foam and vermiculite for this purpose and show that optimal PAH degradation can be maintained with immobilized cells