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Biochar: A Sustainable Tool in Soil Pollutant Bioremediation

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Bioremediation of Industrial Waste for Environmental Safety

Abstract

Soil is a vital reservoir of living being likely bacteria, fungi, algae, protozoa, etc. They dynamically standardize ecosystem functioning but, due to some imbalance and unstoppable anthropogenic activities, for instance, industrialization, urbanization, and wrong agricultural practices, cause soil pollution, eventually resulting in various environmental health hazards. Although there is no any single factor that is responsible for leading these challenges, many more other activities are involved in a direct and indirect manner to creating environmental pollution. Hence newly developed sustainable, cost-effective, and different feedstock-mediated carbon-rich by-product is a unique and multifunctional sorbent called “biochar” that can play a vital role in bioremediation of several highly hazardous petroleum refinery wastes containing different types of aliphatic, aromatics, other complex hydrocarbons, and heavy metals in contaminated soils due to the longtime recalcitrant nature against microbial degradation. Currently, biochar is used as carrier sorbent for various microorganisms since they stimulate the in situ bioremediation of several hazardous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds and heavy metals, due to the large surface area and micropores; consequently pollutants are adsorbed on the surface. Biochar may work singly and along with manure compost and remediates many hazardous pollutants from contaminated soils.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express their sincere thanks to the head of the Department of Environmental Microbiology for providing infrastructure facilities and the University Grant Commission (UGC), New Delhi, for the financial support provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Microbiology (DEM), School for Environmental Sciences (SES), Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Chhatarpal Singh, Shashank Tiwari & Jay Shankar Singh

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  1. Chhatarpal Singh
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  2. Shashank Tiwari
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  3. Jay Shankar Singh
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Bioremediation and Metagenomics Research (LBMR), Department of Microbiology (DM), Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar (Central) University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Ram Naresh Bharagava

  2. Laboratory for Bioremediation and Metagenomics Research (LBMR), Department of Microbiology (DM), Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar (Central) University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Gaurav Saxena

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Singh, C., Tiwari, S., Singh, J.S. (2020). Biochar: A Sustainable Tool in Soil Pollutant Bioremediation. In: Bharagava, R., Saxena, G. (eds) Bioremediation of Industrial Waste for Environmental Safety. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3426-9_19

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