Effect of Land tTreatment on Remediation of Soil Contaminated Soil by Oil Drailling Base mMud

Recently, oil total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) are considered important sources of environmental contamination. One of the effective ways to eliminate this contamination from soils is land treatment method i.e. treatment of the contaminated soil by ventilation and provision of better bacterial living condition. Oil substances used for drilling oil wells, have caused soil contamination in Khuzestan Province. Therefore, the objective of this research was to evaluate some remediation methods to decrease soil contamination by oil. A randomized complete design study was conducted with three treatments including control (no ventilation), O1 (daily ventilation), O2 (every four days ventilation). The study was done in pots using soils contaminated by oil drilling base mud for 10 weeks. Carbon dioxide concentration (as an index of microbial activity) and TPHs amounts were measured after 2, 5, and 10 weeks for each treatment. Results showed that ventilation treatment significantly (p<0.05) increased microbial activity compared with the control. Carbon dioxide concentrations in O1 and O2 treatments were, respectively, 16 and 20 percent more than the control Also, TPHs in O1 and O2 were, respectively, 7.7 and 11.7 percent lower than the control. It can be concluded that land treatment (ventilation in this study) can be used as an effective method for remediating soil contaminated by oil drilling bas mud.