Nanobioremediation for soil remediation: An introduction

Abstract

Soil pollution is one of the main environmental issues worldwide. The intensive use of the soil for industrial and agricultural purposes increases the necessity of recovering brownfields and other polluted emplacements. There are many remediation technologies used until now for this aim, with nanoremediation and bioremediation being the most successful ones in terms of effectiveness and cost. On the one hand, zerovalent iron nanoparticles and their derivatives have been described as highly favorable remediation agents, being extensively used in soil and groundwater remediation. On the other hand, bioremediation, compared with nanoremediation that requires more time to reduce the same amount of pollutants, has many biological benefits, including making the soil ready for reuse. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of both technologies, a combined technology known as nanobioremediation has been developed, which acts as an extremely interesting alternative to merge the main advantages of nano- and bioremediation. In this chapter, the main aspects of nanoremediation and bioremediation are reviewed, and some examples of their use on full-scale applications are described. Finally, the application of a combined method, that is, nanobioremediation, is described.