Ipsita Dipamitra Behera – författare

The purpose of this book is to discuss the challenges that have arisen due to petroleum hydrocarbon wastes, their harmful effects to the ecosystem, and limitations as well as improvement of current biological techniques’ use for management of petroleum hydrocarbon wastes. This book focuses on the role of advanced green engineering technologies for sustainable petroleum waste management in building an economic supportable society as a basic need of developing countries. The rapid economic growth achieved in last decade has been paralleled by an increase in global energy consumption resulting generation of massive amount of industrial wastes. Petroleum wastes release through spillages and leakage from underground tanks, steamers, unplugging of oil wells, and abandoned oil refinery sites that cause extensive contamination of surface soils, groundwater, seas, and ocean resulting in ecosystem damage. Apart from these, petroleum industries release a significant amount of hydrocarbonwastes during processing of crude oil. Improper waste management technique of these petroleum wastes may cause a serious effect toward the living beings. The presence of these hazardous wastes in the environment will make vulnerable conditions to the aquatic as well as terrestrial life. Till date, a number of conventional techniques have been implemented to treat these petroleum hazardous wastes, but biological treatment is more efficient among all on basics of economic and environmental point of view. Bioaugmentation, biostimulation, and combinatorial bioaugmentation and biostimulation waste management strategies are implemented to treat these wastes. In addition to these techniques, biocomposting/biopile, land treatment, and bio-slurry methods have also been employed to reduce the endanger effects of petroleum wastes. Integrating waste management through environmental sustainability and economic development is one of the prime milestones in the circular economy. There is anexigent necessity for developing countries to go ahead toward a circular economy for achieving its Sustainable Development Goals.

The majority of clothes we use regularly are made up of plastic-based materials like polyester, rayon, nylon, and acrylic. When these garments are washed in laundries, they give out tiny plastic fragments termed microfibers which end up in the environment and more precisely in the oceans. Plastic and synthetic polymer wastes which are often irresponsibly discarded into natural habitats undergo bio-fragmentation to give out huge amounts of microplastics and microfibers. Synthetic microfiber pollution has been reported in diverse ecosystems ranging from land and aquatic ecosystem to shorelines and seafloors. Due to the miniature size of the microfibers, it is difficult to detect, investigate, and prevent this type of pollution that is occurring on a larger scale. It is estimated that millions of tons of microfibers are released into the ocean from various sources. They are more toxic because they are more persistent and take a long time to degrade, and it gets accumulated in the environment along with other pollutants. This increases the chances of living organisms in the biosphere ingesting the synthetic microfibers causing harm to the ecosystem and entering into the food chain adversely affecting human beings. It had become a great field of research because of its abundance and the challenges in the identification of synthetic and semisynthetic microfibers from the environmental samples and the time it takes to be degraded. This book focuses on renewable energy generation and value addition from environmental microfiber pollution through advanced greener solution, thus building an economic supportable society as an elementary need of developing countries.

This book offers a variety of cases that detail microbial technologies for remediation of microfiber pollution. Synthetic microfibers are made up of polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate. They are porous and dry which makes them ideal for cleaning, but wide use of synthetic microfibers across industries and the human population in general has led to the accumulation of microfiber wastes in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

Microfibers are a major environmental pollutant due to their endurance, omnipresence, and synthetic composition. Due to their undetectable size and wide distribution, microfibers slowly get incorporated within the food chain leading them into the higher trophic level. Microbial remediation of Synthetic microfibers through biodegradation is a sustainable and economic solution. With advanced bioremediation technology, novel methods have been developed for remediation, recovery, and recycling. Some of these methods are detailed in this volume. 

This book discusses the challenges that have arisen due to environmental hydrocarbon wastes, their toxicity to the ecosystem, limitations, the improvement of sustainable techniques, as well as the zero-waste approach used for the management of environmental hydrocarbon wastes for resilient future. The overarching objective of attaining sustainable development worldwide hinges on the effort to enhance both socioeconomic well-being and environmental health for present and future generations. Nevertheless, obstacles exist in reaching these objectives. For instance, the vital goals of ensuring a clean environment face threats due to the ongoing contamination of both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems with top-priority pollutants, with petroleum hydrocarbons being the foremost among them. In today''s fast-paced society, environmental deterioration is an ecumenical concern. This predicament is intricately linked to unregulated human activities, giving rise to substantial planet problems. Among these, petroleum waste, whether released through spills, leaks from underground tanks, tankers, oil well blowouts, or abandoned refinery sites, leads to extensive contamination of surface soils, groundwater, seas, and oceans, resulting in damage to ecosystems. Additionally, several industries generate a substantial amount of hydrocarbon waste during crude oil processing. To date, various conventional methods have been employed to address these environmental hydrocarbon wastes. In bygone days, technological advancements haven''t necessarily reduced the rate of consumption of resources for a high-quality lifestyle. However, from both economic and environmental perspectives, biological treatment stands out as the most efficient approach with co-benefits. Thereafter, the article not only summarizes key insights from studies on the management of environmental hydrocarbon pollutants in the past decade, thereby compiling recent advances in this field, including the involvement of green technologies, the most potentially degradable substrates/classes of hydrocarbons, etc. but also circularity in creating a zero-waste environment.