Co-Compost Biotreatment of Drilling Muds Contaminated Sites

Received 14 May 2020 Revised 17 June 2020 Accepted 19 June 2020 Available online 31 August 2020 The widespread use of drilling muds has raised concern regarding their impacts on human and environmental health hence the compost biotreatment of oil and water based drilling muds used by petroleum industries in Nigeria was studied. Standard analytical and microbiological procedures were adopted in this study. The results of the compost biotreatment of the oil based mud showed that the amendment with poultry manure recorded the highest Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon degradation of 99.77% while the macrocosm with soil only recorded the lowest (57.13%). For the water based mud, the Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon degradation of the entire macrocosm was uniform giving a percentage degradation of 98.31%. Treatment with oil based mud + vegetable compost + soil recorded the highest oil and grease reduction from 246.1mg/l in week 1 to 94.1mg/kg after 11 weeks. Treatment with oil based mud + NPK only recorded the lowest oil and grease reduction from 245.5mg/kg in week 1 to 143.8mg/kg in week 11. Macrocosm with water based mud + vegetable compost + soil also recorded the highest oil and grease reduction from 142.7mg/l in week 1 to 30.1mg/kg in week 11, while treatment with water based mud + soil recorded the lowest oil and grease reduction from 143.6mg/l in week 1 to 92.4mg/kg in week 11.