Co-Compost Biotreatment of Drilling Muds Contaminated Sites

Abstract

The widespread use of drilling muds has raised concern regarding their
impacts on human and environmental health hence the compost
biotreatment of oil and water based drilling muds used by petroleum
industries in Nigeria was studied. Standard analytical and
microbiological procedures were adopted in this study. The results of
the compost biotreatment of the oil based mud showed that the
amendment with poultry manure recorded the highest Total Petroleum
Hydrocarbon degradation of 99.77% while the macrocosm with soil
only recorded the lowest (57.13%). For the water based mud, the Total
Petroleum Hydrocarbon degradation of the entire macrocosm was
uniform giving a percentage degradation of 98.31%. Treatment with oil
based mud + vegetable compost + soil recorded the highest oil and
grease reduction from 246.1mg/l in week 1 to 94.1mg/kg after 11
weeks. Treatment with oil based mud + NPK only recorded the lowest
oil and grease reduction from 245.5mg/kg in week 1 to 143.8mg/kg in
week 11. Macrocosm with water based mud + vegetable compost + soil
also recorded the highest oil and grease reduction from 142.7mg/l in
week 1 to 30.1mg/kg in week 11, while treatment with water based mud
+ soil recorded the lowest oil and grease reduction from 143.6mg/l in
week 1 to 92.4mg/kg in week 11.