Microbes Could Clean Up Oil Spills

UK scientists are proposing that bacteria might offer a way of cleaning up future marine oil spills. The scientists from Bangor University in Wales think that microbes – found naturally in the sea – might be able to draw on the oil as a source of nourishment and tests of their theory seems to suggest that the method could be used at a variety of sites.

The microbes are common to all oceans and are found on minute algae forms. Conditions exist to ensure that the numbers of these microbes present in the water are kept in check, and these include the types of food that they can eat.

Microbes: Oil Spills

The release of the Welsh microbiologists’ microbe oil spill clean-up research coincides with ongoing efforts in the Gulf of Mexico to contain the oil spill created after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

“The oil spill is an alternative digestible food source for these microbes”, Doctor Christoph Gertler – representing the university’s School of Biological Sciences – stated in an online new release. “Although probably present in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, a shortage of other essential nutrients limits their growth in numbers.”

“What we have trialled is adding the nutrients these organisms need in the form of a fertilizer, in a containing boom, for example.

“This enables the microbes to multiply and, in the process, to break down and digest the pollutant.”

Oil Spill Clean Up

The microbiologists’ initial trial saw them test out the bacteria using 500ml of heavy-grade oil and they achieved a 95 per cent success rate. In a further trial using 500 litres of oil, the microbes were used along with another material capable of absorbing the oil and, this time, “virtually everything” was removed, according to Doctor Gertler.

For the future, he and his colleagues are looking to see how the microbes manage to clean up a real-life oil spill.
“The potential for bioremediation, as this technique is called, is huge”, he added.

“It is, I believe, the only technique that would effectively remove oil that is distributed over such large distances as are being seen in the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill.”