Soil contamination with fuel derived organic compounds is a problem principallycaused by emissions and residues from the petrochemical industry, traffic accidents, andaccidental leaks in pipelines or in underground fuel storage tanks.Soils contaminated with fuels have a high environmental risk, since they cancontaminate other environmental compartments, with the inherent risks for humanhealth and for the environment. Sorption to soil particles, volatilization, leaching,degradation (chemical, photochemical and biological oxidation), plant translocation,etc., are the principal processes that will influence on the final fate of soil contaminantsin the environment.In order to interpret, evaluate the risks and make decisions about the effects of fuelcompounds and assure and adequate protection of the environment, it is very importantto understand the toxicology, analytics and the behaviour and fate in the environment.Within this context, the present doctoral thesis has the following objectives: Development of analytical methods for volatile compounds (MTBE, ETBE andBTEX) and diesel range organics (DRO) in soil and water. Application of thosemethods to the characterization of a site contaminated with hydrocarbons. Study of the dynamics of petroleum contaminants in the soil-plant-water-airsystem through sorption and leaching experiments and a experiment with rootexudates, to study the effect of plants on contaminant mobility through soils. Characterization of gasoline and diesel phytotoxicity, with crop plants bioassays. At last, application of a phytoremediation procedure with Lupinus luteusgrowing on the A and B horizons of a Cambisol contaminated with diesel (1%,w/w), with the inoculation of best plant growth promoting and degrader bacteria,with the best results from previous experiment.The experiments carried out in this thesis, allowed to obtain a wide knowledge of thebehaviour of those contaminants in the soil system, and to predict their final fate in theenvironment, in addition to their toxic effect once released in soil. The proposedremediation techniques, through bacteria assisted phytoremediation, resulted in a clean,cheap, reliable and highly efficient technique, what predicts satisfactory results in itsapplication to real soils.
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