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Prokaryotic community diversity during bioremediation of crude oil contaminated oilfield soil: effects of hydrocarbon concentration and salinity

  • Environmental Microbiology - Research Paper
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Abstract

Crude oil extracted from oilfield reservoirs brings together hypersaline produced water. Failure in pipelines transporting this mixture causes contamination of the soil with oil and hypersaline water. Soil salinization is harmful to biological populations, impairing the biodegradation of contaminants. We simulated the contamination of a soil from an oilfield with produced water containing different concentrations of NaCl and crude oil, in order to evaluate the effect of salinity and hydrocarbon concentration on prokaryote community structure and biodegradation activity. Microcosms were incubated in CO2-measuring respirometer. After the incubation, residual aliphatic hydrocarbons were quantified and were performed 16S rRNA gene sequencing. An increase in CO2 emission and hydrocarbon biodegradation was observed with increasing oil concentration up to 100 g kg−1. Alpha diversity decreased in oil-contaminated soils with an increase in the relative abundance of Actinobacteria and reduction of Bacteroidetes with increasing oil concentration. In the NaCl-contaminated soils, alpha diversity, CO2 emission, and hydrocarbon biodegradation decreased with increasing NaCl concentration. There was an increase in the relative abundance of Firmicutes and Proteobacteria and a reduction of Actinobacteria with increasing salt concentration. Our results highlight the need to adopt specific bioremediation strategies in soils impacted by mixtures of crude oil and hypersaline produced water.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the Brazilian Navy, FAPEMIG, and CAPES.

Funding

This work was supported by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratório de Biotecnologia e Biodiversidade para o Meio Ambiente, Departamento de Microbiologia, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Celia Marcela Camacho-Montealegre, Edmo Montes Rodrigues & Marcos Rogério Tótola

  2. Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad del Tolima, Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia

    Celia Marcela Camacho-Montealegre

  3. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Ceará – IFCE – Campus Camocim, Camocim, Ceará, Brazil

    Edmo Montes Rodrigues

  4. Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology, Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences – CAS, Prague, Czech Republic

    Daniel Kumazawa Morais

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  1. Celia Marcela Camacho-Montealegre
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Camacho-Montealegre, C.M., Rodrigues, E.M., Morais, D.K. et al. Prokaryotic community diversity during bioremediation of crude oil contaminated oilfield soil: effects of hydrocarbon concentration and salinity. Braz J Microbiol 52, 787–800 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42770-021-00476-5

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