Bioremediation of soil contaminated with light crude oil using Fabaceae family

Soil pollution by petroleum compounds is one of the most common environmental problems, which causes soil contamination during extracting, transferring and refining. Bioremediation is an economic technology that makes use of plants to reduce oil pollution in soil. The aim of this study was to evaluate growing ability of Lathyrus sativus, Lens culinaris, Trigonella foenum and Glycyrrhiza glabr of the Fabaceae family in the soil contaminated with light crude oil. Also potential oil removal from soil by these species through bioremediation was shown. In this study, after examining the developmental stage of 4 samples of Fabaceae plant family, potential of removing hydrocarbons from the soil contaminated by light crude oil with different concentrations (1, 2, 3, and 4%) at 40 days in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) was investigated. The result shows that the maximum possibility of pollution reduction is in lathyrus sativus with 73.3% in sample (1%) and the minimum possibility of pollution reduction is in Trigonella foenum with 38.6 in sample (4%). Moreover, Person's correlation coefficient showed that by increasing dry weight of the plant, the amount of pollution reduction in the soil increases. Given the acceptable performance of oil pollution cleanup by these species and economic saving as compared to other methods, the use of this method is recommended for the contaminated areas in Iran.