Has anyone else heard of the oil-eating microbes?

[The Hope Mobile]

What have you heard and why do you think they're not being used already since they have a positive track record from what I understand.
They're cheap, fast and environmentally safe. They die off after they've eaten up all the oil.

I saw something about them on Youtube and it looked GREAT!

[HuckleB]

1. You mean like benzoyl peroxide?

[The Hope Mobile]

12. No, like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI

[Lost-in-FL]

2. In what medium they consume oil?

I have heard of this but wonder if they can they survive in ocean water (salt in water, pH, etc.).

[The Hope Mobile]

7. Its been done in the gulf before and it worked beautfiully -here is the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI

[johnaries]

3. There are already oil-eating microbes in the ocean that are

already attacking the oil in the Gulf. Unfortunately, maybe of them also are toxic.

[The Hope Mobile]

8. These are not toxic - they're natural

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI

[boppers]

14. Cyanide is natural.

So is radiation.

Your high school science teacher should be fired.

[The Hope Mobile]

16. That's helpful. I'm sure you understood what I meant.

[mbperrin]

4. When I was at A&M in the summer of 1970, I did an internship with

wastewater treatment grad students who were using microbes to clean up crude oil. Their by-product was alcohol, which had the great advantage of very quickly evaporating. The only problem they were having is that they were orange, and they were trying to make them maroon. (Nope, not kidding.)

Found this link which seems to be the right time period as well.

http://scrosnoe.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/oil-eating-microbes-ready-to-clean-up-the-coast/

[The Hope Mobile]

10. Here is the link to the one I saw- go past the beginning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI

[Goldstein1984]

5. Oil-eating microbes (bacteria)

already exist in nature. They're routinely cultured by some companies and added to processes where oily water is treated.

Most applications I'm familiar with are in freshwater or soil systems, not marine environments. Many factors influence the effectiveness of biodegradation, including pH, availability of nutrients (NPK), osmotic potential, temperature presence of toxic substances.

I doubt the combination of environmental factors would support biodegradation (the oil provides lots of carbon, but for the bacteria to multiply they need nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and other nutrients in sufficient quantity. Inopol was used as a petroleum-based fertilizer to stimulate biodegradation on beaches in Prince William Sound following the Exxon Valdez Spill, and it was so toxic that it made the workers sick.

Here is the big limiting factor: When a carbon source in added to water, it acts as food. Bacteria metabolizing this food require oxygen. The oxygen demand of bacteria in water will be a function of the food available, and that demand is measured as "biochemical oxygen demand" (BOD). If BOD is high, which it would be if enough oil-degrading bacteria were present, oxygen would be depleted and marine organisms would die for lack of it.

I'm afraid this is a lose-lose-lose situation. The oil is toxic; fertilizers are toxic; rapid biodegradation would create a high BOD.

Besides, I don't believe that is anything approaching the necessary amount of these organisms available commercially.

There will most likely be a massive amount of shoreline and wetlands cleanup with this is all done. That would be a likely application for biodegradation. We'll probably hear a lot about natural attenuation, which is basically monitoring the contamination while nature takes its course.

Just my guess.

[The Hope Mobile]

9. check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI

[Goldstein1984]

22. I wish bioremediation was that effective

It should definitely play a role in the rehabilitation of contaminated wetlands, where nutrients and temperatures and osmotic potential are optimum and they won't be diluted like they would at sea, but the claims about how simply microbes can be applied and how quickly they work are very exaggerated in the video.

My graduate research in environmental engineering was in bioremediation, and we were even able to find a consortium of microbes that was able to (very slowly) degrade a pesticide used specifically to prevent microbial action. The team I worked with studied bioremediation on tundra in the Arctic and Subarctic, in soil and groundwater, on shorelines contaminated by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and even diesel-contaminated ice in Antarctica. I'm also, via both my research and practical applications of oil degrading bacteria in ideal wastewater treatment systems, very familiar with the process. It's effective for some fractions of crude oil, but slow.

Again, I believe enhanced bioremediation will have an important role in the rehabilitation of wetlands, and maybe contaminated shallow sediments and shorelines, but microbes work far too slowly, and would be available in too small of amounts, to be effective in the short term spill response phase. They should be considering the technology for wetlands that have already been oiled.

I'm afraid the damage that has been and has yet to be done by this spill is going to be beyond our worst nightmares. This appears to be far worse in size and impact on the water column than the Exxon Valdez Spill was, and it took 17 years for the Prince William Sound shrimp fishery to recover to the point commercial fishing was allowed. The PWS herring fishery still has not recovered.

[Common Sense Party]

6. NPR had a story a few weeks back about how microbes basically

ate the Mexico spill back in, what, 1979? More of them exist in warm water, like the Gulf, so hopefully they will feast on a bunch of this spill.

[The Hope Mobile]

11. In the video they were mass produced and introduced to the gulf by Texas state and it worked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Oil-eating microbes are common

Many of the microbes in ordinary compost are known to digest oil. In fact, most organic AND inorganic poisons are food to different life forms. Even radioactive material is favored by several known strains of bacteria and fungus. Bio-remediation is already emerging as a major industry. With as much abuse as we humans dish out to nature, it's mandatory that we learn how to clean up after ourselves. Nature may be forgiving, but it's not all-indulgent.

Sea water tends to be much more hostile to terrestrial (non-sea) microbes than oil is. The challenge is to cultivate strains of microorganisms that can be dumped on an oil spill and digest it in short order -- and produce them at a reasonable price.

Oil itself is not some exotic life-hating substance, it's an organic compound made up of mainly alkanes. And it's not universally poisonous. If you want to check this out for yourself, the next time you're constipated, take a dose of mineral oil. Mineral oil -- baby oil -- is super-purified petroleum.

Of course, as we can easily see, when a large "dose" of oil is dumped in the ocean, problems ensue. Oil may not be as immediately toxic as we may believe, but when a small animal gets coated in it, it will still suffocate. And given enough oil, there will then be enough toxins to cause great damage.

Safety first, always. And when that's not good enough, cleanup. I agree, we ought to put some more effort into cultivating better strains of oil-eating microbes. And, as the BP spill shows, we humans need to be a lot LESS forgiving of gross negligence and incompetence.

--d!

[uberblonde]

15. They also cause an overgrowth of algae.

Which can choke off sea life. No easy answers here.

[The Hope Mobile]

17. Did you watch the video?? nt

[Statistical]

18. Gulf already has large numbers of oil eating microbes.

The Gulf (and many parts of world) has been naturally seeping oil for thousands of years.

The problem is the concentration of oil. It would take a LOT of microbes to break all that oil down.

I am not sure it is a silver bullet but it does warrant some study
a) is it better to encourage existing microbe population growth or introduce new ones?
b) how many microbes are required?
c) what is the "oil half life" using microbes?
d) what are any side effect

d is one area to be concerned. Micro-organisms consume oxygen. While not a lot they consume some. When you give them a massive food source population grows exponentially. You potentially could create some massive oxygen deadzones.

Some study is warranted.

[The Hope Mobile]

19. They've done studies on it and they applied it successfully in the gulf in the past

It makes good sense to me.

[Statistical]

21. However never in this scale.

Just saying it might be better/safer to encourage natural microbes already there.

Usually when mankind thinks it knows how to restore and environment we tend to make it worse. Especially dealing with stuff as unpredictable as fast reproducing lifeforms.

[MrScorpio]

20. I heard of them in the 1970's...

An Omni magazine article

Too bad I tossed out all my old issues