Bio Remediation

ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT TECHNOLOGY: 

In Situ Bioaugmentation 

OFFERER: QPL, INC.
800 South Acadia Rd., Thibodaux, LA 70301

SECTION A: 

TECHNICAL APPROACH: 

• Technology: Natural “Shot-Gun” Approach to remediation utilizing a consortium of naturally occurring, non-pathogenic microbes. As contaminants are degraded from their free product state (crude oil) into daughter products, and as the site conditions change, the microbial consortia adapt and continue to biodegrade the contaminants, ultimately into carbon dioxide, water, and biomass; restoring the environment. 
• Origin: Microbes are isolated from extreme environments including soils and waters continually exposed to free product contamination such as pesticides and hydrocarbons; high salinity (15% >); and broad pH range (1 – 14). Each remediation application is started from a first-generation seed culture, i.e. a consortia of isolates from the extreme environments. 
• Growth Media: The microbes are grown in a water-broth media consisting of a hospital grade vegetable protein supplemented with food grade sugars. Nutrient-depleted* broth containing significant quantities of live microbes can be dispersed by air, sea or land.* Adding nutrients to the coasts and marshes of the Gulf States could have adverse effects on the environment and can also impede biodegradation of the crude oil. 
• Growth Quantity: Each remediation application is started from a first-generation seed culture, i.e. a consortia of isolates from the extreme environments. The seed is grown to a 50-fold volume increase over a forty-eight hour period and ready to be dispersed. Applied, the microbes reproduce exponentially every 30 minutes, i.e double their population by degrading the pollutants as their food source. 
• Growth Equipment: Mobile bioreactor design utilizes off-the-shelf equipment to produce the consortium of microbes; permits rapid response and on-site microbe production. 
• Deployment: Microbes are suspended in the water-nutrient-depleted* broth that they are harvested in and can be dispersed by air, sea or land to the contamination plume. Microbes can also be deployed with spill absorption materials. 
• Contaminant Degradation: Microbes in the consortium have biodegraded substituted-, branched- and linear- hydrocarbon contaminants in soils and waters. Some microbes selectively degrade larger and complex contaminants like long paraffin chains and waxes (> n-40, where n is the number of carbons in the hydrocarbon-backbone of the contaminant); and asphaltenes by degrading binding resins, making them more hospitable as a food source to other microbes and eventually the indigenous microbes. End result is carbon dioxide, water, indigenous biomass, and residual inorganic functional groups (i.e. salts, reduced metals)- all natural and harmless. The carbon to nitrogen ratio (macronutrients or main food source), which can be used to measure contaminant biodegradation, averages between 90 to 1, meaning 90 parts equivalent of carbon contamination is metabolized (degraded) into harmless carbon dioxide, water and biomass per one part of nitrogen. Thus, the microbe remediation consortium added does not need additional nutrients to biodegrade the contaminants; in this case crude oil in salt or brackish water in sensitive ecosystems. 
• Microbial Toxicity: The consortia is grown and applied with minimal protective personal equipment (goggles, gloves). Species and varieties of microbes in the consortium produced and applied into the environment are non pathogenic to man, plants or animals and are represented as follows:
  
  

• M = Motile, i.e., the microbe has the ability to move itself toward food (contaminant)
• FA = Facultative Anaerobe, microbe can exist in the presence or absence of air (oxygen)
• OA = Microaerophillic, microbe needs 2ppm oxygen to seurvive
• UK = Unidentified to date